Sicken and So Die Read Free Page B

briefly on his way to greater things. An opportunity to get his photograph in a newspaper – any newspaper – was not one that at this phase of his career he would ever pass up.
    Sally Luther’s relationship with the publicity machine was more complex. In her early twenties she had been the tabloids’ darling. A pretty blonde ingenue, she had been cast effortlessly, straight out of drama school, as one of the leads in the ITV sitcom
Up To No Good
. In that show she had charmed the nation through four series, and become a familiar presence failing to answer the questions on showbiz quizzes, guesting daffily on game shows and manning phone-lines on charity telethons. She described the interior of her flat to colour supplements, her kind of day to the
Radio Times
, and her first kiss to teenage magazines. She had all the trappings of stardom: a fan club, a rose named after her, and even the unwanted attentions of obsessive fan letters and a mysterious stalker. The public loved her, she could do no wrong, and she made a very good living.
    Sally Luther’s fall from this state of grace was not dramatic. No messy break-ups from famous boyfriends, no arrests for drunken driving, no allegations of drug abuse. She just slowly dropped out of the public consciousness.
Up To No Good
was not recommissioned for a fifth series. The pilot for a new Sally Luther sitcom was rejected. Guest appearances in other sitcoms became more spaced out and finally dried up.
    The public did not fall out of love with Sally Luther; they simply forgot about her. Without a weekly reminder of her face on their television screens, she slipped imperceptibly out of the collective memory.
    She wasn’t out of work. She wasn’t broke. She didn’t crack up. She was just brought up hard against the fact that she’d had a lucky start, and if she was going to continue in the business, then she’d have to rebuild her career from scratch.
    And she’d have to rebuild it from different elements. The baby face that had floated her through her early twenties had grown harder and more lined. The natural blonde of her hair had darkened to a light brown. She could of course have kept the colour artificially, but decided not to. The new Sally Luther was not going to be a clone of the old.
    She had never been as stupid as she appeared on the screen. She applied her considerable intelligence and pragmatism to starting again.
    Charles Paris admired the determination with which Sally Luther had hit the comeback trail. She had immersed herself in stage work, learning the basics of a trade which her television success had bypassed. She had taken small parts in out-of-the-way theatres, slowly building competence and experience. She had worked her way up from being a pretty face to a respectable actress, and the Asphodel Productions’ Viola was the highest point yet of her reconstituted career.
    It was Charles’s secret opinion that Sally Luther, even with all her grafting away, was not really a good enough actress to play Viola. But he respected her professionalism and enjoyed working with her.
    The Trustees of Chailey Ferrars grudgingly – it was the adverb with which they performed their every action – allowed the
Twelfth Night
cast a small room off the ground floor administrative office in which to change. So, amidst coffee machines-and photocopiers, and in cramped proximity to Vasile Bogdan and the three – mercifully small – actresses, Charles Paris donned his Sir Toby Belch costume.
    He was pleased that Gavin Scholes was doing the play in what he, Charles, thought of as the ‘right’ period – in other words, contemporary with when it had been written. Charles Paris had had enough of gimmicky productions of Shakespeare. He’d been in a nineteen-twenties flapper-style
Love’s Labour’s Lost
; he’d worn cut-off jeans as Bardolph in
Henry V
, a pin-striped suit as one of the tribunes