The Star Witness Read online

  “Yeh, that’s compulsory for all the female characters.”

  “And then my kid’s going to get sick with some disease.”

  “Oh, what fun.”

  We talk for a bit. She laughs at all my jokes, although it’s too early to tell whether she’s a woman who always laughs at men’s jokes. After a few minutes, Nigel starts clapping his hands.

  “Listen up, everyone, be quiet, listen…LISTEN…thank you so much. OK, so Gavin’s a no-show, stop groaning, Gavin’s a no-show, so my lovingly crafted schedule gets flushed down the bog, and we’re pulling forward scene 21, Melanie’s first encounter with Lenny, sexual chemistry, bla-blah-blah, up until she storms out, everyone got that?”

  Jade puffs out her cheeks. “Straight in at the deep end, then. Crikey.”

  “You’ll be fine,” I tell her.

  “Yeh, I’ll be OK once we start to rehearse.”

  The make-up girls giggle. “Rehearse?” says Simone.

  “Oh, bless,” sighs Nigel. “OK, so it’s scene 21 final checks, we’ll be going straight for a take.”

  * * *

  When the lunch break arrives (only fifteen minutes late) I head for the canteen and grab a table by the window, waiting for the new girl to appear. But instead, Gavin appears from nowhere and slumps into the chair opposite me. He has no plate of food, just a pot of yoghurt.

  “Where were you?” I ask. “You were supposed to be in every scene this morning. It’s been pandemonium. They said you were in Spain.”

  Gavin mumbles into his yoghurt. Something about nobody understanding; his eyes flicker around, like those of a small, cornered mammal.

  “Are you alright?” I ask, though I don’t really care.

  “I can’t handle this new schedule, Kevin. It’s too much. They’ve added twelve hours to the filming week, I can’t function like that.” He pushes the yoghurt carton away. “It’s making me ill.”

  “Then get a doctor’s note. Get signed off.”

  “Not that kind of ill,” he says, bleakly.

  We sit in silence for a few moments. Some sparks suddenly burst out laughing on the table behind us, which makes Gavin jump. Then he lets out a deep, long, attention-seeking sigh.

  Where is Jade? Perhaps she brought sandwiches.

  “I’m going to make a formal complaint about this new schedule, because it is ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Gavin, it is ridiculous.”

  She might be eating in the make-up truck with the harpies.

  “If I make a written complaint, will you sign it as well? Perhaps you could persuade the rest of the cast. No one will listen to me.”

  He’s right, they won’t.

  “If we said we felt it was in the best interests of the show, then Louise couldn’t just ignore us, could she? Especially if you…y’know…”

  Oh God, he’s casting me as Spartacus.

  “…I mean, if people get exhausted emotionally…how are we supposed to act? It’s self-defeating. They at least owe us some input. No artist can work in this kind of environment.”

  Alright, that’s it. I put down my knife and fork and stare directly into those hunted-looking eyes.

  “OK, Gavin, listen…what we do here is not art. This is fundamentally a sausage-making factory and we are the mechanically retrieved meat that goes into the sausage-making machine. All that they are interested in is banging out more sausages for the buck. So, please, don’t use the word ‘artist’ again, or I may just throw up. All anyone wants from you is for you to turn up, on time if at all possible, say the lines, collect your cheque and bugger off. No one wants your input, nobody owes anyone anything, you are just a piece of sausage.”

  Suddenly she’s there, tray in hand.

  “Can I join you?”

  “Be my guest,” says Gavin, as he picks up his yoghurt pot.

  “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  “No,” he replies, with a half laugh, then he rises and leaves.

  I call after him. “Gavin, this is Jade.” But he doesn’t turn.

  “Oh dear…was it me?” she asks.

  “’Course not. You’re perfect,” I tell her, and her whole face lights up.

  For the next few days, I did not come on too strong, I just engineered as many friendly chats with Jade as possible. And, as part of that charm offensive, I am fetching tea from the big urn in the corner of the studio, when I feel a familiar chill at my shoulder.

  “Making tea for two, Kevin?”

  “Yes, Louise, I’m getting Jade a cup.”

  “That’s nice,” she says, with a thin twitch of a smile. “It’s lovely how you always make the new actresses feel at home…actually –” (here we go. I recognise that pause) “– I’ve been meaning to have a chat with you.” (Yes I knew it. This will probably be about the waiting time on my cars.) “I…um…I was watching a first cut of the scene you filmed on Monday – the one where Lenny finds out that Gary’s gone to the police…” (Eh? Where’s she going with this?) “And I felt…” (Yes?) “I felt…well, nothing really, not a thing…and that was the problem.”

  “And did you expect to feel something, Louise?”

  “Yes, of course. I mean Lenny’s just discovered his brother’s betraying him. I wanted to experience his rage.”

  “Really? That doesn’t sound very healthy.”

  A micro-frown. Good. I’m getting to her. She steadies herself.

  “You know perfectly well what I mean…I want to see him feel the anger.”

  I start pouring the second cup of tea. “Lenny’s anger is inside…where no one can see it.”

  “Well that’s not much use to the viewer, is it, Kevin?”

  The urn coughs out hot water in fits and starts.

  Louise takes a breath and ploughs on. “It’s your job to make us feel what his emotions are.”

  “But Lenny never shows his emotions. That’s what makes him so interesting. I’ve always played him…internalised.”

  “Yes, well there’s a difference between internalised and autistic.”

  She’s pleased with that, I can tell, but I’m not prepared to give her the satisfaction of seeing me fray. So I decide to be frivolous, because I know she hates that.

  “Perhaps he is autistic, Louise. Perhaps that’s been his problem all along.”

  “Très drôle.” (Ooh, French, she’s really narked, bullseye.) “The thing is, Kevin,” (come on, baby, give it your best shot) “we pay you a lot of money,” (debatable) “…and for that money we expect you to deliver,” (yeh, deliver, like groceries) “and that isn’t happening.”

  As Louise drones on, I find myself wondering how much mental energy I expend heckling her like this. And it’s not just her. These days it feels like I’m watching everyone from the back of the stalls. She’s wearing a pained smile now, while she assesses my performance in the Christmas episode. What a waste – for such a highly intelligent woman to be overseeing a show like this. There are so many worthwhile things she might be doing, instead of trying to constantly win more and more viewers at less unit cost.

  “Am I boring you, Kevin?”

  “No, not at all, Louise. I’m just surprised that there are any concerns over my performance. None of the many directors you employ have mentioned anything.”

  “They’re too busy staying on schedule. I…I’m just saying that I think you could give it a bit more.”

  Should I let that go? Probably. But I’m not going to.

  “I give it as much as it needs, or deserves.” She straightens slightly. Time for me to leave. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Jade’s tea is getting cold.”

  As I shape to move past her, she steps closer and lowers her voice. “I want to see more emotion on screen, Kevin.”

  “Fine, just ask the writers to indicate which emotion you want in the stage instructions at the top of the scene…in that helpful way of theirs.”

  “When did you get so cynical, Kevin? (Oh this is rich, from the most cynical person on planet
Earth.) The writers are giving it one hundred per cent. (No they’re not. What would be the point?) I’d expect a little more solidarity from you. You used to write, yourself, didn’t you? Once upon a time.”

  There is a twinkle behind the eyes that tells me she feels she has drawn blood. But I’m not going to show her anything.

  “That was a million years ago, Louise. In a previous existence.”

  I start to move away with the teas. She’s got nothing left. She can’t fire me and she knows it.

  So why is she walking alongside me?

  “This…schtick of yours, Kevin. You need to be careful. Because sooner or later…it will all catch up with you.”

  “What exactly will catch up with me?” She doesn’t reply. She just gives me a short, cryptic smile.

  “Well, I hope you’ve taken my observations on board.”

  Across the studio, I can see Jade leaving the set, heading towards me, luminous and expectant. Louise turns away and starts to glide towards the scene dock. I call after her.

  “It’s duly noted, Louise. You think I’m phoning in my performance.”

  “Darling,” she calls back, without a glance. “I think you’re phoning in your life.”

  But it hardly registers, because Jade is taking the tea from me and telling me, wide-eyed, that I’m a lifesaver.

  I liked Jade then, in the early days, I liked her a lot. I liked the nervousness in her. The way she would pull a face and say “Crikey”. There’s something very attractive about a woman who’s permanently bewildered.

  In the first few weeks, Jade and I had to do a lot of kissing scenes, as Melanie and Lenny began their on/off, love/hate relationship. Kissing someone on a hot, brightly lit set while being watched by lots of fat technicians is not remotely arousing. It’s very un-sexy, you ask any actor, that’s what they’ll tell you. And they’re all lying bastards. Of course it’s arousing, we’re not made of stone. Yes, you’re trained and professional but your hormones aren’t. And, as for the stuff about it being impossible to get sexually excited kissing someone you don’t really know in front of dozens of people…two words: “office” and “party”.

  So, pretty soon, Jade and I were a couple, of sorts. Admittedly, on my side, the relationship was a little bit penis-led, but that’s how many relationships begin, isn’t it? Well, most of mine. All bar one, in fact. I can’t actually remember what we talked about in those first weeks, but I don’t recall any conversations about feelings or families or the dreaded “where is this going?”. Just a lot of sex and conspiratorial intimacy; sly glances and brushing fingers. She was fresh and she was fun, and most important of all, she stopped me from feeling bored. On set, we were discreet and professional and we did a very good job of keeping everything quiet, until the Daily Star printed photos of us snogging in a lay-by.

  They weren’t very good photos, they were taken from a long way away. On a mobile phone. By a twelve-year-old girl.

  So, accepting the inevitable, Jade and I went public. The programme’s publicity department had a multiple orgasm. To begin with, I refused all their requests for us to do joint interviews, but Jade argued that we might as well do one and get it out of the way.

  Looking back, it surprises me that I gave in to her. Why did I do that? It wasn’t like me. Perhaps I felt more for her than I realised.

  So one morning, we find ourselves waiting nervously in a green room lined with large photos of toothy presenters.

  “Crikey,” she says, “this is scary.”

  “Hey, come on.” I squeeze her hand. “How bad can it be?”

  Half an hour later we’re sitting side by side on a sofa, live, on daytime TV, being interviewed by a shiny two-headed creature called NickandWendy.

  Wendy trills like a budgie: “And we’re very excited now, yes, we are, aren’t we?”

  “Well, you’re excited,” simpers Nick.

  “Well, you’re excited too.”

  ‘Yes, I’m excited too, but I’m not bouncing around like a two-year-old, missy.”

  We have to sit there like lemons while these two fuckwits continue this display of sexless flirting until Wendy gives him a playful presenter’s whack on the shoulder and hisses: “Stop it, you!”

  She turns to camera two. “He is awful, isn’t he, no but seriously though, we are very excited because joining us now are soapland’s hottest couple, Melanie and Lenny, also known as actors Jade Pope and Kevin Carver. Welcome to you both.”

  We mumble our thank-yous.

  “Now let’s cut to the chase,” bobs Wendy, “because we understand that, like Melanie and Lenny, in real life, you are an item, is that right?”

  “An item?” I reply, with a professional twinkle. “You make us sound like something in a supermarket.”

  Nick and Wendy laugh, way too much.

  “Two for the price of one,” Jade adds. They laugh, we laugh, everyone’s laughing, this is horrible. Already I’m regretting it, every fibre of my being is screaming “Get out now! While you can,” but I just keep laughing.

  “Seriously though,” says Wendy, as if those two words had some transforming power, “you are together, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I reply, “we are together.” Although for some reason the word together comes out sounding like it’s in quotation marks.

  Nick leans forward, aiming for “earnest”.

  “Is that difficult? Y’know, having a romance which is sort of mirror-imaging the romance you’re having in the show’s storyline—”

  “Which is great, by the way—”

  “Oh yes – we’re all—”

  “Totally hooked.”

  “Totally, but is it a problem? The mirror-imaging thing?”

  I breathe deep, to buy myself a moment where I can suppress my irritation.

  “Well it’s not really a problem, because, y’know, the show is just acting, whereas me and Jade…”

  “…we’re not acting,” says Jade.

  “No, that’s right.”

  “The two of us –” she leans against my shoulder, “– that’s real.”

  “Yeh, keep it real, man.”

  Nick and Wendy laugh like idiots. I laugh though inside I’m wondering why the fuck I just said that. Nick echoes “keep it real” with an attempt at a black-power, clenched-fist salute and Wendy giggles some more, but stops suddenly when she spots the Floor Manager, in mime, cutting his throat. For a moment, I get an urge to mime cutting my throat as well. Suddenly, Wendy sits up straight.

  “Well, don’t go away, you two, because after the break we’ve got Britain’s Bravest Child. He’s undergone fourteen major operations and I know he’d love to meet you.”

  * * *

  I had sat on the sofa of death many times before. As Louise the producer was prone to pointing out, it was a contractual obligation. But I’d never had to fake quite that hard. Somewhere, in the dark at the back of my brain, I could hear the faint tinkle of an alarm bell.

  As we ride back in the taxi, the bell gets louder.

  “I thought that went quite well,” she says.

  A beat. Was that irony? Not sure. “Did you?” I reply.

  “Yes. Didn’t you?”

  “No, it felt like torture.”

  Her shoulders stiffen. “Oh…I see…well, it was good for profile.”

  “Profile?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Whose profile?”

  She turns away to look out of the window.

  “Everyone’s.”

  “Everyone’s?”

  “Yes, you, me, the show…everyone’s.”

  I look out of my window and watch the ant-heap of the rush hour. For a minute or so, I sit there feeling a growing sense of discomfort. Eventually, I can’t take it any longer, it has to be said.

  “What the fuck is ‘profile’, anyway?”

  She looks at me as if I’m an idiot.

  “Profile,” she says, slowly, “is buzz.”

  “Profile is buzz?”

  “
Yes, buzz, it’s important…it’s why I did that photo session.”

  “Oh…right.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ve got a good body, why should I hide it?”

  “Did I say you should hide it?”

  “It’s what you didn’t say.”

  “Oh, so now I’m also being held responsible for the things that I’m not saying. That leaves me a bit wide open, doesn’t it?”

  Jade then launches into an over-detailed justification of how the photoshoot will be “empowering” and, as she chatters, I begin to realise that this is a very different girl from the one that I had met a few months ago on the set.

  This girl has acquired a strategy.

  If I had had any guts I would have pulled the plug on our relationship there and then; and none of this would have happened.

  But, instead, I wait four months.

  Until the moment when we are sitting in that restaurant and she hits me with that unanswerable question.

  “Why did you feel the need to say that about me just now? About the estate agents…in front of that couple.” Her eyes are cloudy and tears are brimming at the lids. “You showed me up, completely, in front of them, why?”

  “I’m sorry,” I shrug, limply.

  “You’re not an easy man to be with sometimes, Kevin, do you know that?”

  “Yeh, I know.”

  She starts to ferret inside her bag for a Kleenex and I decide that this – now – is the moment.

  “Listen, Jade.” I reach across the table to take her hand, but I can see she’s already alarmed by the new tenderness in my tone. “Erm…look, there’s no easy way to tell you this…”

  “You’ve found someone else?” she blurts.

  “Good grief, no, no, there’s no one else, it’s just that, y’know, we’ve had a great time, but I feel…well, it’s just this isn’t working, is it? Not really, not if we’re honest, maybe it’s the age gap…”

  “That’s not bothered you before.” She holds the Kleenex against her eyes.

  “W-ell, I dunno it’s…it just feels like we’re going through the motions, I mean, at times, it feels like we don’t even like each other that much any more.”

  What happens next is truly awful. She seems to physically shrink before my eyes; shrink and fade away, like I have pierced her. Her voice becomes hollow and tiny.