do I.’ Dorian hurled Sabrina’s script across the table, narrowly missing whacking her in the face. ‘Read.’
For Dorian, Sabrina’s attitude this morning was the straw that had broken the camel’s back. The last few weeks had been breakdown-inducingly stressful.
Thanks to the location scouts’ dismal failure to find him a suitable Wuthering Heights or Thrushcross Grange in England, they were still stuck in LA and running six weeks behind schedule. His intention was to shoot as many of the interior scenes as possible at home in Romania. The Schloss was more than grand enough, it would save some money, and crucially it would allow him to spend at least part of the year under the same roof as the increasingly restless Chrissie. But most of the film had to be shot in England. They ought to have been doing today’s read-through on set, not crammed into his LA production office like a bunch of fucking sardines.
To add to his work stresses, things at home had gone from bad to worse in the last few weeks. Predictably, Chrissie had hit the roof when he told her about selling the Holmby Hills house. He’d made the mistake of doing it face to face, on a flying visit back to Romania last week.
‘You sold my home in LA, behind my back?’ Chrissie screeched, the sinews in her neck straining with rage, like a starving baby bird demanding food. Sprawled out on a chaise longue in one of the Schloss’s myriad palatial formal rooms, wearing a coffee-coloured silk La Perla negligee and matching lace-trimmed robe, she looked every inch the pampered chatelaine. ‘How dare you! I suppose now you think you can keep me and Saskia locked up here forever?’
‘No one’s trying to lock you up, honey,’ said Dorian exhaustedly. ‘I’m trying to make the best financial decisions for all of us as a family, that’s all.’
‘How?’ yelled Chrissie. ‘By selling our home to fund another one of your shitty, artistic movies? How many people actually saw Sixteen Nights? Five?’
Dorian winced. That hurt.
‘This one’ll be different,’ he said quietly. But Chrissie didn’t want to hear it. Another movie meant Dorian spending yet more time away from home, months on end in which she would be left to take care of Saskia alone in this dump while he gallivanted around the world enjoying himself.
‘I’m not going on vacation you know, honey,’ he tried to defend himself. ‘For the first months at least I’ll be stuck in LA, working my ass off, living in some shit-hole of a rented apartment.’
‘Well whose fault is that?’
‘I’ll be lonely as hell.’
‘Ha!’ Chrissie snorted viciously. ‘Lonely. You don’t know the meaning of lonely. It’s Saskia and I who’ll be lonely. You’ll be off banging your leading lady.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Dorian lost his temper. ‘You seriously think I’m interested in Sabrina Leon?’
‘Why wouldn’t you be?’ pouted Chrissie.
‘Because she’s a child,’ said Dorian, ‘an irresponsible child. I’ll be babysitting her, not sleeping with her. Besides, you know damn well you’re the only woman for me. How do you think I feel, having to leave you here, knowing every man on this estate wants you?’ Bending down over the chaise longue, he ran a hand along his wife’s taut, Pilates-toned thigh. Even after so many years together, just touching her made him feel ridiculously aroused.
Slowly, Chrissie parted her thighs, allowing him a glimpse of her newly waxed pussy. She’d deliberately had a Brazilian the day before Dorian was due to leave, knowing how anxious it would make him. ‘Don’t go then,’ she said, coyly.
‘I have to go,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse with longing. ‘I need to do this movie, Chrissie. We need it.’
Chrissie sat up, clamping her legs shut like a librarian slamming closed a book. ‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘But don’t you dare complain to me about how hard this is for you.’
‘Come with me,’ Dorian pleaded.
‘And what, live in a hotel in my own home city? Schlep Saskia around some freezing-cold film set like a piece of excess baggage? No thanks. I’m not interested in following you round the world as your little woman.’
Dorian realized he couldn’t win. He’d offered her the part of Cathy months ago, but as usual she’d turned him down flat, a mask of anger and fear falling over her face like a security grille. ‘Our daughter needs at least one parent,’ she’d told him bitterly. It was almost as if she wanted to be unhappy, but still Dorian felt like a failure. Things had not improved between them before he left for LA. He’d been in town for five days now, and Chrissie had yet to return one of his calls.
Angry and anxious, he needed a vent for his frustration. When Sabrina Leon showed up late to this morning’s script read-through, he found one.
The rest of the day was not a rehearsal. It was a bullfight, a gladiatorial combat to the death, and Sabrina was the bull. While everybody else was allowed to get through their scenes, with Dorian commenting on their performance only at the end, Sabrina was picked up on every line. She was sloppy. Her delivery was too fast. She failed to react with enough emotion to Viorel’s lines. She was too emotional.
Over and over again, Dorian hit her with the same three words, words Sabrina came to loathe like poison:
‘Do it again.’
By the end of the day, even the most die-hard Sabrina-haters in the cast were beginning to feel sorry for her. Spoiled she may be, and attention-seeking and entitled. But you had to admire the stamina with which she ran back at each scene, over and over and over and over, determined to get it right, switching from her two parts as both the older and younger Catherine with consummate professionalism. As older Cathy, she’d be reading a passionate love scene with Viorel one minute, then jumping straight into a painful scene where, as the younger Catherine, she was being tormented by Heathcliff, forced to live as a common servant in her own childhood home. Even without Dorian’s bullying, the emotional rollercoaster was intense.
At five o’clock, Dorian finally called time on the battle.
‘All right everybody. We’re done for the day. Does anyone have any questions?’
I do, thought Sabrina. When are you going to drop dead?
No one spoke. They all wanted to go home. Just watching Dorian shred Sabrina’s performance had been exhausting.
‘I have a question.’ Viorel Hudson’s sexy British drawl rang out through the silence. ‘Do we know when filming’s actually going to start?’
Dorian’s eyes narrowed. ‘Soon. Anyone else?’
‘Is that really all you can tell us?’ Viorel pressed him. ‘I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but I don’t understand the need for all the secrecy. I mean, I haven’t even been told where the location’s going to be. Has anyone else?’
Everyone shook their heads.
‘Whether or not you understand it, you have all signed confidentiality agreements,’ snapped Dorian. ‘All details – all details – about the production of this movie remain confidential, and logistical information will be released to you on a need-to-know basis only.
‘In
