Tea or coffee?’
‘A stiff gin?’
Claire raised a thin brow. ‘You’re not going to need it. You’ve done this a hundred times before and I’m going to sit in. If the journalist even looks like deviating from the brief I’ll be all over him like a rash.’ ‘A pleasant thought indeed.’
‘I’d make a rather good rash.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
They’d just been served a pot of tea when a young girl with a ponytail and a shirt that said ‘Whatever’ approached the table and announced that the crew was ready when they were. Claire waved over a waitress who said she’d bring the tea things after them and they took the lift up to the room.
‘OK?’ said Claire as the doors closed on reception.
‘OK,’ Laurel agreed, and she tried very hard to believe it.
The documentary team had booked the same room as be-fore: it wasn’t ideal to film a single conversation over the course of a week and there was the small matter of continuity to think of (in whose service, Laurel had brought with her, as instructed, the blouse she’d been wearing last time).
The producer met them at the door and the wardrobe man-ager directed Laurel to the ensuite, where an iron had been set up. The knot in her stomach tightened and perhaps it showed on her face, for Claire whispered, ‘Come with you, shall I?’
‘Certainly not,’ Laurel whispered back, forcing aside all thought of Ma and Gerry and the dark secrets of the past. ‘I should think I’m perfectly capable of dressing myself.’
The interviewer—‘Call me, Mitch’—beamed when he saw her and gestured to the armchair by a vintage seamstress’s mannequin. ‘I’m so glad we could do this again,’ he said, enclosing her hand inside both of his and pumping it keenly. ‘We’re all really excited by how it’s coming together. I watched some of last week’s footage—it’s very good. Your episode’s going to be one of the highlights in the series.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it.’
‘We don’t need a lot today, there are just a few bits and pieces I’d like to cover, if that’s OK with you? Just so we don’t have any black holes when we cut the story together.’
‘Of course.’ There was nothing she’d rather do than explore her black spots, except perhaps root canal surgery.
Minutes later, made up and miked up. Laurel arranged her-self in the armchair and waited. Finally, the lights came on and an assistant compared the set-up with polaroids from the previous week; silence was called and someone held a clapperboard in front of Laurel’s face. Snap went the crocodile.
Mitch leaned forward in his seat.
‘And we’re rolling,’ said the cameraman.
‘Ms Nicolson,’ he began, ‘we’ve spoken a lot about the highs and lows of your theatrical career, but what our viewers want to know is how their heroes were made. Can you tell me about your childhood?’ The script was straightforward enough; Laurel had written it herself. Once upon a time, in a farmhouse in the country, there lived a girl with a perfect family, lots of sisters, a baby brother, and a mother and father who loved each other almost as much as they loved their children. The girl’s childhood was smooth and even, filled with long sunlit spaces, and makeshift play, and when the nineteen-fifties yawned to an end and the sixties began to swing, she took herself towards the bright lights of London and arrived on the wave of a cultural revolution. She’d been smiled upon by luck (gratitude played well in interviews), she’d refused to give up (only the glib ascribe all good fortune to chance), she hadn’t been out of work since finishing drama school.
‘Your childhood sounds idyllic.’
‘I suppose it was.’
‘Perfect even.’
‘No one’s family is perfect.’ Laurel’s mouth felt dry.
‘Do you think your childhood formed you as an actress?’
‘I expect so. We are all shaped by that which came before. Isn’t that what they say? They, who seem to know everything.’
Mitch smiled and scribbled something in the notebook on his knee. His pen scratched across the surface of the paper and as it did, Laurel experienced a jolt of memory. She was sixteen, and sitting in the Greenacres sitting room while a policeman wrote down every word she said—
‘You were one of five siblings; was there a battle for attention? Did it force you to develop ways of being noticed?’
Laurel needed some water. She looked about for Claire, who seemed to have disappeared. ‘Not at all. Having so many sisters and a baby brother taught me how to disappear