And he was wearing sand-colored Havaianas with his jeans and Ramones T-shirt.
‘You like him though. Is that what’s making you feel guilty?’
Ellie lobbed the balled-up tissue at the bin. It missed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Yes.’
‘And in a few weeks you’ll be going down to Cornwall with him for his sister’s wedding. I expect you’re feeling a bit funny about that too.’
‘No.’
‘Sure?’ Jamie looked mildly surprised. ‘You won’t find it weird, putting on a show and essentially pretending to be his girlfriend, when all the time you do actually have a bit of a secret crush on him and wish it could be happening for real?’
‘Oh…’ Ellie closed her eyes; what was the point of trying to hide something from Jamie when he was already inside her head? ‘Fine, yes, it’ll be weird. But I have to do it and I can’t back down. All Zack wants is a stooge, a stand-in to get him out of an awkward situation. So long as he doesn’t know how I feel about him, it’ll be fine.’
Chapter 40
‘…Thanks, yes, I’ll let him know about that. Bye!’ Ellie hung up and scribbled the message on the notepad next to the phone. Zack was upstairs conducting a conference call. Her recovery was now complete; it was Thursday and she’d been back at work for a full week. The flu was now so much a thing of the past that the thought of feeling too ill to take even a sip of water seemed bizarre.
The doorbell rang just as the office phone went ting, indicating that the conference call upstairs had ended.
Ellie opened the front door, her heart sinking slightly at the sight of the Kerrigans on the doorstep. Zack had already said he couldn’t do anything. It really wasn’t fair of them to turn up again and pester him like this.
‘Hi,’ Kaye said eagerly. ‘It’s us! We’re back!’
OK, the job of a good PA was to make her boss’s life easier. Much as she’d liked the pair of them, they needed to learn that no meant no.
‘It’s OK, we aren’t here to see Zack.’ Joe Kerrigan took a step towards her and, with a flourish, produced a bunch of enormous yellow orchids. ‘These are for you. Because you have been… magnificent! And we’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you’ve done.’
‘Hold on.’ Ellie took a step back as he jiggled the orchids and a spray of bright orange pollen threatened to land on her white shirt. ‘What have I done?’
‘We’ve sold our script. Two studios battled each other for the rights.’ Kaye looked as if she was ready to burst with excitement. ‘Our dream director wants to work with us on this and future projects. And it’s all thanks to you. You made Tony Weston read our screenplay and you’ve changed our lives!’
In shock, Ellie hadn’t even heard Zack come down the staircase. Appearing beside her, he said, ‘I didn’t know about any of this.’
‘Me neither.’ She shook her head. ‘I had no idea Tony even looked at the script. I tried my best to make him read it, but he said he wasn’t interested if there wasn’t a part in it for him. It’s still at home somewhere… in the magazine rack, I think…’ She tailed off at the sight of Kaye and Joe both grinning and shaking their heads at her.
‘Well,’ said Zack, ‘however it happened, it’s fantastic news. And you can’t stand out there. Come on in and tell us everything.’
Which was how Ellie learned that the screenplay wasn’t, in fact, still lurking at home in the midst of the overstuffed magazine rack. Between them, Joe and his wife relayed the story of how Tony had taken it with him on the plane, then piqued the interest of his own agent Marvin, who had in turn piqued the interest of Stephen, a leading screen agent at the talent agency where they both worked. A buzz around the script had duly been created, several studios had been keen to option it, and frenzied negotiations had ensued.
‘It was unbelievable,’ Kaye exclaimed. ‘They flew us out there. First class! We had champagne and little slippers and everything!’
‘And then we had all these meetings,’ Joe took over. ‘You can’t begin to imagine what that was like. They’re talking budgets and ideas and A-list stars… they’re telling us our script is brilliant—’
‘I knew it was brilliant,’ Ellie blurted out. ‘I knew it!’