Oh, God! Was everyone all right? The kids! Had there been an accident with the twins? Or had Violet bunked off with some of those new friends she’d started hanging around with? And she couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of scrape too-independent-for-her-own good Polly might have got herself into.
She couldn’t seem to speak. Couldn’t seem to ask the police officer any of that. She just made a tight little croaking noise that he must have taken as an invitation to carry on.
‘It’s regarding Sylvia Wade … She’s your great-aunt, I believe?’
Juliet cleared her throat and forced down her panic. Somebody needed her. This was no time to get all hysterical.
‘Can you tell me what’s happened? Is she hurt?’
‘Don’t worry, she’s … fine.’ She heard the officer take a deep breath. ‘Fighting fit, actually,’ he added with a wry hint to his tone. ‘I just think you need to get down to the Leisure Centre as soon as you can.’
Gemma rapped on the trailer door – loud enough to be heard, but not so firmly it might be interpreted as a demand. As she waited the icy wind cut into her cheeks and her knuckles froze into a fist. Glamorous job? Hah! Don’t make her laugh. She pulled the hood of her waterproof closer round her face and got ready to smile brightly.
He wouldn’t open the door himself, of course. Too used to having a faceless someone to do it for him.
She knocked a second time and her phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it. Even if it was the director, ranting and raving about the whereabouts of his A-list actor, answering it would only slow her down.
It seemed an age before she heard a muffled ‘Yeah?’ from the other side of the trailer door. If she’d gone by tone of voice alone, she’d have guessed he was soaking up the sun on a Caribbean beach, not freezing to death on the fringes of Western Ireland in December.
A wall of heat hit her when she stepped inside. No wonder he sounded so relaxed. The temperature in here really was verging on tropical. It was certainly warm enough for the six-foot hunk of blond gorgeousness she’d come looking for to only be dressed in a faded T-shirt and a pair of shorts as he lounged on a sofa further down the trailer. She closed the door behind her and instantly started to sweat in her layers of thermals and assorted woolly things.
‘Hey, Gemma,’ he said, and smiled, revealing his far too white teeth. For some reason she found all that symmetry slightly irritating.
Even more irritating was the state of his undress. He was supposed to be wearing the dark garb the wardrobe department had carefully selected to suggest a tortured hero on the verge of saving the world. However, she let none of her annoyance bleed through to her tone of voice. ‘They’re ready for you on set now, Toby.’ Her face was a mask of calm as she re-jigged times and schedules in the back of her head.
If she could hurry him along, they might not lose any filming time before the light went. She’d had to change the call sheet for the following day three times already. The last batch of A4 sheets sat ready and waiting in her makeshift office and she really didn’t want to dump them and start all over again.
She glanced around. Where was the girl from wardrobe? She’d seen her come in here not half an hour ago, and she could have sworn she hadn’t seen her leave. ‘Has Caitlin gone to fetch something from the truck?’ she asked innocently.
Toby just smirked and his eyes darted towards the back of the trailer where the bedroom was situated. ‘Something like that.’
Gemma’s stomach sank and she visualised dropping her call sheets into the waste-paper basket one by one, calling Tobias Thornton, action star and sex god, every name under the sun as she did so.
As great as her job was, she occasionally wished she didn’t work in the film industry. It spoilt all the fantasy. When this film came out, her friends would make her go and see it with them so she could tell them all the gossip and inside secrets, but while they sat in the dark and sighed at Toby’s drop-dead smile and killer abs, all she’d be thinking about was how many times she’d come close to wiping that smile off his face with her clipboard.
What she wouldn’t give for a real hero, the kind of man these actors pretended to be, but never were. The problem was that she always chose men who seemed dynamic and exciting, but eventually turned out to be a little … well, flaky.
There was a thud from somewhere near the bedroom and the wardrobe assistant emerged, holding a pair of dark trousers. ‘Oh, hi …’ she said airily. Too airily for the blotchy blush creeping up her neck. ‘I was just … you know … doing some emergency repairs on Toby’s leathers.’ She shot him a nervous look and giggled.
That could have explained Toby’s trouserless state and the slight delay, but Gemma doubted it. Caitlin’s hair was all mussed up and her sweater was on inside out.
She said nothing. She didn’t care what they got up to – although she’d thought Cait had a bit more sense. All she cared about was getting one hot film star back into his leathers and onto a speeding motorbike.
‘All fixed now?’ she asked, checking her watch yet again.
Caitlin nodded.
‘Great. Then perhaps you could help Toby into his clothes, so we can get going?’ She hadn’t been able to help that little inflection. Too tempting. But to take any sting out of the comment, she teamed it up with her best Second Assistant Director smile. Her secret weapon.
Toby and Caitlin exchanged guilty glances and then he ran a hand through his hair, looking just the tiniest bit sheepish.
Job done. In one smooth move she’d let them know she wasn’t a pushover, but that she also wasn’t going to get her knickers in a twist about it – as long as Toby was out of that trailer door in full costume in the next five minutes, of course.
The wry smile he gave her said: Message received and understood.
She smiled back, a real one this time, and pulled her hood up over her hair, only to discover that in the heat of the trailer her curls had frizzed to twice their usual volume. Fabulous. She jammed her hood over the fluff and headed for the door, bracing herself, and then she was out into the driving wind, clutching her coat closed as she trudged across the car park of the Victorian hunting lodge they were using as their base. She didn’t even take a moment to drink in the rugged scenery: the choppy, grey lough and the ancient rugged mountain that towered over it. She did use the opportunity to mutter a few choice words into the wind, words concerning toddler-brained actors, weather that seemed to have a personal vendetta against her and anything else that came to mind.
The warmth of Toby’s trailer had made coming back out into the freezing cold even worse, which didn’t improve her mood much. It also sparked a longing within her.
She wished she really was lazing on a palm-fringed beach. The urge to jump on a plane and do just that when this shoot was finished was becoming irresistible.
It had been a long job, maybe that was it. She really deserved a quiet, relaxing Christmas when this was all over, before she jumped on another plane to another far-flung location and it started all over again. She sighed. That sunlounger on a Caribbean beach was practically calling her name.
If only she hadn’t caved in to Juliet’s nagging and told her she’d spend Christmas at hers. Juliet had gone on and on about Christmas the last time Gemma had seen her and Gemma had eventually just blurted something out to keep her quiet.
It had all been Juliet’s next-door neighbour’s fault. If he hadn’t picked a fight with her, she’d have never had three G&Ts, and then she might have been able to talk her way out of it. At the very least she might have been able to remember exactly what Juliet had said to her. The only thing to do now was to play along and pick up the details piece by piece. Juliet was sure to give her chapter and verse at some point, anyway. Probably in the form of a laminated sheet with