furiously at her hands. ‘I – medical reasons.’
I follow her gaze. She bites her nails; it’s the first time I’ve noticed. ‘Are you OK, Tina?’
‘Sure. I’m fine.’ She stares at me defiantly, her dark eyes flashing. I realise she’s quite beautiful; like the nails, I never noticed before. She always looks so downbeat, and those terrible lips … Suddenly it makes sense.
‘Are you having your lips done?’ I ask, and immediately wish I hadn’t. Tina is an unknown quantity. She worked for Byron Bay, the big action star, for several years before me and I think he was such a basket case she wanted a change. She’s been here for three years, but apart from the fact that she has a mom in Vegas and she once got an infected finger from a cactus prick, I know nothing about her. I’ve asked, believe me. I’m nosy, and a little bit lonely, plus there’s something about her I really like. She’s kind of loopy, but cool. But there’s some stuff you just shouldn’t ask. I’ve lost a level of appropriateness, living in my bubble.
‘I’d rather not say,’ Tina tells me firmly.
‘I’m sorry. Tina, I shouldn’t have asked.’ A wash of mortification floods over me. ‘It’s none of my business. Two months is fine – I guess we’ll have to find someone to cover you, and—’
‘I’ve already spoken to Kerry at WAM about it,’ she says. ‘In preparation. She’s talking to Artie and Tommy and I’ve contacted the agency who covered me last time. You liked that girl Janelle, didn’t you?’
‘Sure … sure …’ I’m looking at her now, wishing there was something else I could say, some way to cross the gulf between us. ‘She wasn’t as good as you, of course not, but – thanks, so …’ I sound so over-keen, it’s tragic. It’s like a scene from He’s Just Not That Into You.
‘I’ll leave you now.’ She takes a big breath and her pink tongue runs over her swollen lips. ‘Um, hey. Just one more thing. Deena’s arrived.’
My mind is still turning over the conversation, and it takes a moment before I catch up. ‘What?’
‘I warned you earlier, Sophie …’ Tina looks like she’s about to burst into tears. I wave my hand at her.
‘I know, I know. Don’t worry. Oh, jeez. Where is she?’
‘In the guest house. Unpacking. Her pickup is in the garage.’
‘She has a pickup truck?’
Tina gives the slightest suggestion of a smile. ‘It’s got three pairs of mannequin legs in the back.’
With anyone else this would be strange, not Deena. I give a small groan. ‘Listen, can you go across to the guest house and take out the laptop and the projector? Just in case.’
‘Sure,’ says Tina. ‘I’ll – leave you then.’
She closes the door and I stare at the pile of scripts but my eyes dart towards the window, in case Deena’s peering in, watching. My ghoulish godmother is here. When Mum was in London in the seventies, during her brief bid for fame as an actress, Deena was her best friend. They did everything together. Deena was always the star; my mother was dazzled by her, and still is. In the early eighties Deena moved to LA for a part in a TV soap and for a while she was doing well – Mum could boast to people she met in Woolworth’s that she knew someone in Laurel Canyon, and that she might have a guest role in next season’s Dynasty – but then she turned thirty-five and it all sort of petered out, like it does for hundreds of women here every year.
But I don’t trust her and I don’t think she’s a good influence, either. Mum behaves like a Bunny Girl when they’re together, wiggling and giggling and batting her eyelashes at everyone, and telling anyone who’ll listen that they used to ‘rule London in the seventies’. Those were her glory days, she’s always telling me. They can’t have been that glorious though. I mean, she ended up moving to the middle of nowhere and becoming the wife of a man who runs garages in the Gloucester area.
Still, Deena’s my godmother. I can’t let her sleep on the streets, can I, but I wish she wasn’t here. My shoulders slump childishly as Tina shuts the door, and I’m left alone gazing around my office at the markers of my career: the MTV movie award for Best Kiss, the magazine covers with my face on, the poster for A Cake-Shaped Mistake from Italy that looks a bloody piece of human tissue and not a wedding cake. I pull out the box of scripts, open page one of Love Me, Love My Pooch, and start to read.
CHAPTER FIVE
HALF AN HOUR later I put Love Me, Love My Pooch down and gaze around the room. I wish I had a cigarette. Or a gun. I pick some gum out of a drawer and chew three sticks in one go. Love Me, Love My Pooch is shit. Perhaps I’ve been blind all these years, just happily saying what people told me to say, but this is a new low. Sample extract:
Int. House.
SEAN IS TALKING ON THE PHONE.
SEAN (chuckling into phone):
Yeah, she’s a bitch. And those puppies of hers … man, they are cute!
MEGAN IS COMING IN FROM OUTSIDE. SHE HEARS SEAN TALKING. SHE IS DISGUSTED.
MEGAN (in hallway, standing holding mittens in hand, mouth wide open):
What kind of man am I dating! A man who calls women bitches and talks about their puppies?
SHE WALKS INTO THE KITCHEN AND TAKES HER COAT OFF. SHE BENDS OVER SEAN.
MEGAN:
I hate you, Sean Flynn! Get out of my life! You’ll never see these puppies again!
SHE SQUEEZES HER BREASTS IN HIS FACE AND LEAVES.
I keep thinking, Oh, no, this is so bad, there’ll be some pay-off, it’s setting itself up for a secondary joke, it’s not totally this one-note and crass and shit. But I’m wrong. This is the movie Artie thinks is going to take me ‘Sandy–Jen big’. Well, if Cameron and Carey Mulligan really are dying to do it, which I doubt, they’re welcome to it. No way. No freaking WAY.
Carmen brings me my lunch in the end and I spend the afternoon going methodically through the rest of the pile. Boy Meets Girl is about a boy who meets a girl. Yep, you guessed it. She seems really sweet at first but then turns out to have a wedding album full of pictures of dresses she wants, and flower arrangements, so by accident he sleeps with a stripper. From Russia with Lust is an American Pie style frat-comedy: a cute local prosecutor marries a girl he has a whirlwind romance with and she turns out to be a Russian prostitute! Pat Me Down is about a waitress who falls in love with a bodyguard after he strip-searches her at a nightclub and she takes secret stripping classes as a fun thing to do with all her girlfriends! Because being a stripper is every little girl’s dream, isn’t it? Then there’s Bride Wars 2 – seriously, who thought that was a good idea? Did they not see Bride Wars?
Not one of these girls has anything to say about anything other than boys, weddings, clothes and shoes. I mean, I like all those things, but is that all there is?
I scuff at the carpet and my toes kick something by accident. It’s the Eve Noel biography which has
