to give her a bit of glamour, which she would never have. Apart from adolescence, there was something different about her face, although it might have just been the strain of trying to make the script funny.
The girl in the film was something and someone else entirely. In the film, Vera forgot who she was watching. She believed everything Lallie did, so that the girl you saw was an ignorant, cunning little pain in the arse, but transparently compelling. It was an awful waste, really. When she’d encountered Dougie at a crammed Christmas drinks party in Earls Court, he’d mooed about Lallie going to America, and the scandal of her getting kicked off a film for not being pretty enough, or for behaving unprofessionally, or for being caught pleasuring members of the crew. The third purely bilious and mainly alcoholic theory reminded Vera of the stand-in on their shoot – what was her name, Sue? Lou? – the lascivious 25-year-old midget. It would be an easy mistake to make, blaming Lallie for those escapades, always assuming she’d taken her stand-in across the pond with her. But really, what did she know? As for unprofessional behaviour, if you were giving them everything else they wanted, it meant sweet Fanny Adams. Plainness was a much more believable lapse. All the talent in the world didn’t make you a star, and stars had to shine. Of course, since Vera herself had come at it from the opposite angle, smouldering in her small way, she wasn’t about to deny you needed a bit of talent as well.
On screen, Dirk was gearing up to no good, and then there she was herself, hatchet-faced and disapproving. She’d not done badly for herself, considering. Only that morning, after a very lean period, she’d got a call-up for an episode of an awful action-spy-series thing. Apparently Hugh was one of the producers, bless him. She’d heard about him taking the telly shilling, and good luck to him really. It hadn’t come to anything with the other producer, the American girl. In fact, Dougie had sworn blind she’d had some sort of a fling with Mike, of all people, and got him on another film in the States. Anyway, as far as Hugh was concerned, it had obviously not done Vera any harm to be nice. Seeing the film was her little treat to herself, a celebration of employment. She could write it off on her tax, as well.
79. EXT. HEXTHORPE FLATS LOCATION. DAY.
COLIN leads JUNE towards a derelict building, once a bomb site.
JUNE
It doesn’t look special to me.
COLIN
Well, you can’t always tell, can you, from the outside?
In front of Vera, to the right of the screen, was a pair of canoodling teenagers, very clearly not there for the film. The boy – it had taken her some time to establish that he was a boy – had pink cockatoo hair, shaved at the sides in that way she’d started to spot doing the rounds. Sitting behind him would have been as bad as being trapped behind a hat-wearer. The girl, on the other hand, judging from her silhouette, didn’t have any hair at all. They were odd, those youths that had bloomed in the heat, vivid and hostile, like troglodyte teddy boys. Their choice of nappy pins to adorn themselves baffled her: did they want to be babies? One she’d seen near Leicester Square had appeared to be wearing a Nazi armband, of all things.
The two in the cinema were keen for an audience. As soon as a jacketed fellow in the row behind them coughed reproval, they started acting up, the boy straddling the girl and extending his tongue, to which the girl responded ostentatiously, in a reptilian French kiss. It was annoying, but on the whole ignorable. Vera decided to ignore it.
The girl Lallie was playing walked her lonely way past the school. The scene forced the grimness of real events into Vera’s mind, although at the time she had made a point of not reading anything beyond the first few newspaper reports. Certainly nothing to do with the trial. They’d had to recut some of the school scenes, apparently, as both the children involved, the victim and the other one, had been extras, and there were sensitivities to be observed. Still, justice had been done and there was enough in the papers every day to top it. There had been another girl as well, from a better home; what had happened to her? It was an awful, awful business. Better not to dwell. It certainly made you glad not to have children.
80. INT. DERELICT HOUSE LOCATION. DAY.
JUNE is unafraid, defiant even.
JUNE
There’s nothing special about you.
COLIN
Shut up!
JUNE
Everyone knows about you, you know, you’re just a—
COLIN
I said shut up!!
The wrench is already in his hand. JUNE screams.
Watching June meet her fate, its framing tastefully askew, Vera realized that what had happened was almost certainly the reason for the delay in releasing the film. It pursued the story, a ghost at the edge of a mirror. When, in the final moments, the camera lingered on the empty desk and the dutifully innocent faces that flanked it, Vera’s tears of artistic empathy were amplified by a nearly enjoyable frisson of the real. All such a bloody waste, really. The time it took to make a film. It seemed like the be-all and end-all, and then it came to this. A July afternoon with ten people in the audience, two of them practically copulating.
She stayed long enough to catch her name, just to be sure. She always did. There it was, large as life, although not as large as some. She was the only one left to see it.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Lallie Paluza
June, 1975
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
August, 1975
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
July, 1977
Chapter 32
Table of Contents
Copyright
Lallie Paluza
June, 1975
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
August, 1975
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
July, 1977
Chapter 32