Darling Sweetheart Read Free Page A

eight.’
    ‘I don’t think–’ she began, but his window hummed shut and the cars revved away. However, the mini-convoy did not travel far before having to halt again, the only road off the hilltop being clogged with extras. Emerson’s car sounded its horn, causing a horse to rear and its rider to make a very twenty-first-century gesture. Tress watched the chaos.
    ‘You know, you should accept his invitation.’
    ‘I don’t want to. I need to concentrate on Roselaine.’
    ‘Yes. But you should.’
    ‘He won’t rehearse, he hasn’t spoken to me since he arrived, he ruins our first scene together and now he summons me fordinner like I’m a takeaway pizza!’
    Tress smiled. ‘We should try to keep the gods happy, should we not? And he is right – you two should smash the ice.’
    ‘It’s
break
the ice.’
    ‘Yes. Hey, you there!’ He beckoned the runner, who still carried Emerson’s sword. ‘Call a driver to take Miss Palatine home from wardrobe.’
    ‘No, I’ll walk.’ She set off towards the castle.
    ‘Annalise!’ he called after her. ‘Break that ice! For the film’s sake, if not for yours!’
    She made her way through the remaining extras. A wolf-whistle sounded behind her, then a burst of laughter. She pretended not to hear. Stuntmen lounged around the castle walls, where enormous mattresses had cushioned their falls. Some stared after her but, again, she ignored them as she strode under an arch and into an enclosed keep, where several sizeable trailers and a marquee hid from the cameras. The largest trailer and the marquee housed make-up and wardrobe for the principal cast – the legion of extras was handled at a warehouse near the bottom of the hill. The next-largest trailer was Emerson’s. She stomped up the steps of her own trailer, a much smaller one at the back of the lot. She slammed the door, dived headlong onto the sofa and let out a muffled roar. She had worried herself sick about her first scene with Emerson for nearly three months… for him to wreck it so casually! She lay for a moment, until she felt her anger ebb. It was only when she finally raised her head that she noticed her trailer was full of white roses.
    They were everywhere – an arrangement on the table, a cluster beside the TV, another bunch by the window and, when she checked, even beside her bed. The white roses had not been there that morning; in spite of the heat, her skin came up in goose bumps. She fumbled to remove her costume, tore a seam and swore. She ran to the bathroom, wiped her make-up off too quickly, pulled on a light summer dress and a pair of sandals,grabbed her purse from a drawer, gathered the costume and fled.
    ‘Are you okay? You’re ever so pale.’ A wardrobe assistant called Olivia took the costume from her arms.
    ‘I’m sorry – I think I ripped it.’
    ‘Oh, I can fix that. But can I make you a cup of tea or something?’
    ‘I’m fine, it’s just… you know, time of the month.’ She turned to leave the marquee then hesitated. ‘By the way – you didn’t happen to notice anyone hanging around my trailer, did you?’
    ‘Gosh, is something missing?’
    ‘No, it’s probably nothing. See you in the morning.’
    She walked across the keep, but instead of leaving through the arch, she entered a side door in the castle, where she instantly traded the afternoon heat for a miraculously cool darkness. As if sneaking through a cathedral, she padded along a corridor then climbed a spiral staircase into a great hall. Stained-glass windows cast a yellow gauze across the bare planks of the floor. She slipped into an annexe then up another spiral staircase, narrower than the first. This ended in a door, which she opened onto a huge blue sky.
    The world fell away from the turret-top balcony, five hundred feet into the village of Beynac-et-Cazenac, a strip of brown rooftops squeezed between the foot of the cliff on which the castle perched and a lazy bend in the river Dordogne. Specks that