into the background.’ So adeptly, she could slip away from a family picnic in the middle of a game of hide and seek.
‘As an actor you could hardly be accused of disappearing into the background.’
‘But acting isn’t about being noticed or showing off, it’s about observation.’ A man had said that to her once at the stage door. She’d been leaving after a theatre session, buzzing still with the high of performance, and he’d stopped her to say how much he’d enjoyed it. ‘You’ve a great talent for observation,’ he’d said, ‘Ears, eyes and heart, all at once.’ The words had been familiar, a quote from some play or other, but Laurel couldn’t remember which one.
Mitch cocked his head. ‘Are you a good observer?’
Such a strange thing to remember now, that man at the stage door. The quote she couldn’t place, so familiar, so elusive. It had driven her mad for a time. It was doing a good job now. Her thoughts were jumbled. She was thirsty. There was Claire, watching from the shadows by the door.
‘Ms Nicolson?’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you a good observer?’
‘Oh yes. Yes, indeed.’ Hidden in a tree house, quiet as can be. Laurel’s heart was racing. The warmth of the room all those people staring at her, the lights—
‘You’ve said before, Ms Nicolson, that your mother was a strong woman. She lived through the war, she lost her family in the Blitz, she started again. Did you inherit her strength, do you think? Is that what’s enabled you to survive, indeed to thrive, in a notoriously tough business?’
The next line was easy to deliver, Laurel had done so many times before. Now, though, the words wouldn’t come. She sat like a stunned mullet as they dried to sawdust in her mouth. Her thoughts were swim- ming—the house on Campden Grove, the smiling photograph of Dorothy and Vivien, her tired old mother in a hospital bed—time thickened so that seconds passed like years. The cameraman straightened, the assistants began to whisper to one another, but Laurel sat trapped beneath the furious bright lights, unable to see past the glare, seeing instead her mother, the young woman in the photo who’d left London in 1941, running from something, looking for a second chance.
A touch on her knee. The young man, Mitch, with a concerned expression: did she need a break, would she like a drink, fresh air, was there anything at all he could do?
Laurel managed to nod. ‘Water,’ she said. ‘A glass of water please.’ And then Claire was by her side. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing, just a little warm in here.’
‘Laurel Nicolson, I’m your agent and, more to the point, one of your oldest friends. Let’s try that again, shall we?’
‘My mother,’ said Laurel, tightening her lip as it threatened to quiver, ‘she isn’t well.’
‘Oh, darling.’ The other woman took up Laurel’s hand.
‘She’s dying, Claire.’
‘Tell me what you need.’
Laurel let her eyes close. She needed answers, the truth, to know for certain that her happy family, her entire childhood wasn’t a lie. ‘Time,’ she said eventually. ‘I need time. There isn’t much left.’
Claire squeezed her hand. ‘Then you shall have some.’
‘But the film—’
‘Don’t give it another thought, I’ll take care of that.’
Mitch arrived with a fresh glass of water. He hovered nervously while Laurel drank it.
Claire said, ‘All right?’ to Laurel and, when she nodded, turned to Mitch. ‘Just one more question and then, regrettably, we’ll have to call it a day. Ms Nicolson has another engagement to get to.’
‘Of course.’ Mitch swallowed. ‘I hope I didn’t … I certainly didn’t mean any offence—’
‘Don’t be silly, none taken.’ Claire smiled with all the warmth of an Arctic winter. ‘Let’s get on, shall we?’
Laurel set down the glass and readied herself. A great weight had lifted from her shoulders, replaced by the clarity of firm resolve: during the Second World War, as bombs rained down on London, and plucky residents mended and made do and spent their nights huddled together in leaky shelters; as they craved oranges and cursed Hitler and longed for an end to the devastation; as some found courage they’d never used and others experienced fear they hadn’t imagined, Laurel’s mother had been one of them. She’d had neighbours, and probably friends, she’d traded coupons for eggs and been thrilled when she came by an occasional pair of stockings, and in the midst of it all her path had crossed those of Vivien and Henry Jenkins. A friend she would lose and a man she would one