talking about.’
‘Sorry.’ He looks, and sounds, instantly contrite. But then he is an actor, I suppose. Still, he repeats it. ‘Sorry. That was unforgivably rude of me.’
‘It was, a bit.’
‘It’s just that the girlfriend thing … it’s private, you know?’
‘Yes. Of course. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’
‘Ah, you’re all right … Sorry, I’ve just realized I don’t know your name.’
‘Libby. Libby Lomax.’
‘Well, you’re all right, Libby, Libby Lomax. I’ll forgive you for calling me an arsehole. And for lying to me about being a smoker.’
Damn it; I’ve let the bloody thing practically burn itself out in my hand.
‘I am a smoker! I just forgot I had one,’ I say, popping the cigarette back into my mouth and hoping I can look one-tenth as sexy as him when I take a drag on it …
‘Dillon!’
Shit. It’s Vanessa, coming out of Wardrobe and walking towards us.
If she catches me smoking a cigarette, I’ll be off this location shoot in even less time than it would take Dillon to talk Cass into bed with him.
Instinctively, I do the first thing that springs to mind, which is to pull on the head I’ve got squashed under my arm.
It’s a nanosecond later that I realize I still have the cigarette between my lips.
But it’s OK! It’s OK, because all I have to do is walk past Vanessa and go, as fast as I can, round the other side of the catering bus, where I can pull my head off and take the cigarette out.
Or at least, I could, if she weren’t blocking my way with her arms folded and a scowl on her face.
‘Libby,’ she hisses, none too quietly, ‘what the fuck are you bothering Dillon for?’
‘She wasn’t bothering me, Vanessa, don’t stress about it.’ Dillon taps me on the shoulder from behind, and when I wheel round unsteadily he’s holding out one of my latex gloves. ‘You dropped this.’
‘Thank you,’ I mumble, snatching the glove and making to turn away again. But he stops me.
‘You’re smoking,’ he says.
Traitor! He’s sold me out, and right in front of Vanessa, too.
‘I mean, you’re really smoking, Libby.’
He’s staring into my eyes, through the pin-holes in my Warty Alien head, with such intensity that I can’t help but think … Is he saying he fancies me? I mean, nobody’s ever called me ‘smoking’ before, and certainly not someone as smoking-hot himself as Dillon is, but I suppose weirder things have happened—
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Vanessa ruins the moment by screaming, at Obergruppenführer volume, from behind me. ‘Her fucking head’s on fire!’
At the very same time as she screams this, I inhale an extremely unpleasant smell that can only be burning latex.
OK, so I know the Thing To Do in a fire is to stay cool, calm and collected. I know the worst thing you can do is to panic, because you just start to drag other people under with you …
Oh, hang on a minute, that’s drowning.
In a head-on-fire scenario, panic, I suspect, is perfectly acceptable.
‘Shit!’ I almost out-scream Vanessa, pulling at my head in a wild frenzy. But it isn’t coming off! It isn’t coming off! ‘Get it off, get it off, get it off me!’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Vanessa is yelling, again, as she stampedes away from us toward the catering bus door. ‘We need the fucking fire extinguisher!’
‘There’s no time for that.’ I hear Dillon’s voice, and then feel his hand grab my wrists to stop me ineffectually yanking at my head. ‘Stop,’ he orders, ‘and keep still.’
Then he grips the alien head, pulls it clear of my actual head, and throws the smouldering latex down onto the ground.
And then everything goes black.
I haven’t fainted, by the way. I think Dillon’s just thrown his T-shirt over me to put out any lingering sparks.
There’s a brief, stunned silence.
‘You all right under there?’ Dillon asks, a moment later.
I open my mouth to say ‘Just about’ when I’m hit, smack in the middle of the face, with a powerful jet of very cold liquid.
I gasp, which draws a large portion of sodden T-shirt into my mouth. I gag, splutter, and double over.
‘Fucking hell!’ I hear Dillon say, from my position near his groin. ‘It was under control. You didn’t need to blast the poor girl with the fire extinguisher!’
Ah, so it was very cold foam, then. Just in case I didn’t look like enough of an idiot with a wet T-shirt over my head … no, it has to be a foam-covered T-shirt instead.
But Vanessa clearly isn’t in any kind of mood for sympathy.
‘Libby! What the fuck are you playing at?’
‘Hey, leave her alone.’ I feel a hand on my shoulder, pulling me upright. ‘Let me get that off you,’ Dillon says, pulling at the T-shirt.
‘I’m fine! Might be better to leave it on for a bit longer, actually!’ Like, until the end of time. Or at least until I’ve regained my composure, and until everyone on the catering bus – whom I can now hear leaning out of the windows, asking each other what’s been going on, and having a good old chortle when they hear the answer – has gone home and, ideally, sixty or seventy years down the line, died, without me having to face them again. I grip onto the T-shirt at neck level. ‘Better not to … you know … expose burnt skin to the air.’
‘Shit, did your skin burn?’ Dillon rips the T-shirt off my head in one smooth movement; he’s obviously a man accustomed to removing items of clothing from women. ‘Oh, don’t worry, you’re all right. It’s only your hair.’
‘Only my hair what?’
‘That’s been burnt off.’
‘My hair’s been burnt off?’
‘God, no, no, no.’
I feel weak with relief, until he goes on.
‘I mean, not all of it. Only most of the right side. Unless …’ He studies me for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, maybe I just didn’t notice. Did you have a lopsided haircut when I was talking to you five minutes ago?’
‘No!’
