What They Do in the Dark - By Amanda Coe Page 0,48

up. Her mum had a look entirely familiar to Pauline from Joanne – it meant free-roaming rage that had just found an outlet.

‘What’s your name, eh?’

‘Pauline.’

‘Pauline what?’

‘Pauline Bright,’ offered Gemma, cravenly.

‘What, from that lot down Clay Lane?’

She didn’t need a response. Gemma’s mum pulled Gemma’s arm like she was cracking a whip.

‘I don’t want you hanging round her!’

‘I’m not, Mum, honest!’

‘And you, leave her alone from now on or I’ll get the police on to you!’

‘I wasn’t doing owt!’

The habitual phrase leaped from Pauline with a new meaning. Injustice seared a blade of tears in her throat.

‘I know you’ve been fighting – I sent a letter to the school! So stay away! I’m warning you. Scruffy little beggar.’

The woman’s face was ugly beneath her make-up, rearing towards her. Pauline spat. Then she ran.

‘I wasn’t doing owt, you fucking bitch!’

She stopped running when she couldn’t breathe easily any more. She didn’t want to go home, so she took a long loop back to the bus station and watched the buses arrive and depart, the people getting on and off, until the short night darkened. She hadn’t even done owt either, except try to be nice. She fucking hated Gemma’s mum, the fucking bitch.

Call sheet: ‘That Summer’

July 3rd 1975.

Director: Michael Keys

DOP: Anthony Williams, BSC.

First AD: Derek Powell.

2.00 p.m. call.

CAST: John Reed [PC MERCHANT], Anne Fortune

[MARY], TBC [LITTLE BROTHER], Vera Wyngate

[WOMAN IN CAR].

LOCATION: Moxton Rd, Carr Hill, Doncaster.

Scenes 80, 83.

80. EXT. RESIDENTIAL ST. DAY.

PC MERCHANT arrives to break the news to JUNE’s mother and father.

83. EXT/INT. RESIDENTIAL ST. DAY.

WOMAN IN CAR sees PC MERCHANT leave JUNE’s house.

Today was Vera’s swanswong. When she’d been sent the script, she’d had pages more, including a court scene, but it had all been cut. Since she got paid the same fee, she really didn’t mind, although actually it was always nice to work – not just to have a job, but to turn up and have a natter and get to know the lie of the land. Of course that was clear the moment you set foot on set; whether it was a happy crew, whether there was a star or another cast member creating intrigue and unhappiness with the director (usually, in her experience, and God knows she’d done this herself in her time, because they felt they were being ignored), whether there were two stars jostling for supremacy or creating some magic because they were either at it or so desperate to be that the thwarted energy crackled its way into the can. All these things and a million others were apparent in a couple of hours, but none made a blind bit of difference to how good a film was. A happy set was absolutely no guarantee of a good film. One of the most enjoyable experiences of Vera’s career had been on a heated biopic of Edward Elgar called Hidden Rhapsody, which had turned out a tortured stinker despite incontinent daily giggles. Of course the script had never been in its favour – come to think of it, most of the giggles had been triggered by the lines they had to say.

She couldn’t really tell whether this one was any good, script-wise. It was sparse, as seemed the fashion these days, and the story was a little grim for Vera’s taste. Personally, she liked a love story. But the atmosphere on set, beyond the industrious concentration you took for granted as men and women dedicated themselves to sorting out the myriad problems they specialized in (floor cables, a squeaking door, a shiny chin), was uncharacteristically hard to discern. Make-up were always the first port of call for cast intrigue, but that afternoon, Vera could get very little out of them as they drabbed her down. It wasn’t that they weren’t forthcoming. There just seemed, disappointingly, little to tell.

‘Mr Bogarde’s a lovely man. Very professional,’ the girl observed, sponging pancake on to Vera’s jawline with an even roll of the wrist.

‘Hiya!’

The friendliness in the voice was toffee-apple sweet and just as brittle. The mother, of course, smart as paint as usual, ciggie on.

‘Hello, darling.’

One had to be friendly. One was, in the end, friendly. And surely if there was gossip, this woman, having the least to do, might be the source of it.

‘Ooh, mind if I take the weight off?’

Yvonne? Julie, was it? No, that was the make-up girl – perched on the vacant chair between Vera and the actor playing PC Plod.

‘You all right, Katrina?’

Katrina. Katrina pulled a face into the mirror, and