director summons me with a knock on the door, I screw Alicia’s face into an even tighter ball and throw her back in the bin before following him outside. We make polite small talk as the golf buggy trundles around the lot. He’s still young and worries about things he won’t worry about when he is older, the way we all did before we knew what life really had in store. I listen to his tales of woe, interjecting the occasional sympathetic word, as we drive along at less than twenty miles an hour. I enjoy the light breeze in my face, and the smell of paint and sawdust that lingers in the air around every film set. It makes me feel at home.
The designers spend months building whole new worlds, then tear them down as though they never were when filming is over. Just like a break-up, only more physical and less damaging. Sometimes it’s hard saying goodbye to the characters I become. I spend so long with them that they start to feel like family, perhaps because I don’t have a real one.
My anxiety levels are at an all-time high by the time the buggy turns the final corner. I haven’t rehearsed for today the way I normally would; there just wasn’t time. The traffic of worrying thoughts has come to a standstill in my mind, as though it were rush hour up there, and I’m stuck somewhere I don’t want to be.
We stop outside our final destination: an enormous warehouse that contains most of the interior film sets for Sometimes I Kill. I hesitate before going inside. My mind is so full of everything that is happening in my private life, that for a moment, I can’t even remember what scene we are shooting.
‘Good, you’re here. I need you to deliver something special today, Aimee,’ barks the director as soon as he sees me. ‘We need to believe that the character is capable of killing her husband.’
I feel a little bit sick. It’s as though I’m trapped inside a life-sized joke.
I stand on the set of my fictional kitchen, waiting for my fictional husband to come home, and I see Jack smile at me before our first take.
Nobody is smiling by the twentieth.
I keep forgetting my lines, which never happens to me. I’m sure the rest of the cast and crew must hate me for it. I get to go home after this scene, but they don’t. The clapboard sounds, the director says, ‘Action,’ again, and I do my best to get it right this time.
I pour myself a drink I’ll never swallow, then pretend to be surprised when Jack comes up behind me, slipping his arms around my waist.
‘It’s done,’ I say, turning to look up at him.
His face changes, in exactly the same way it did nineteen times before. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. It’s done. It’s taken care of.’ I raise the glass to my lips.
He takes a step back. ‘I didn’t think you were actually going to do it.’
‘He wouldn’t give me what I wanted, but I know that you will. I love you. I want to be with you; nobody else is going to get in the way of that.’
The word ‘Cut’ echoes in my ears, and I can tell from the look on the director’s face that I’ve nailed it this time. As soon as he’s watched the scene back, I’ll be free to go.
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