What They Do in the Dark by Amanda Coe Read Free Book Online

miraculous, unique point of concentration distintegrated once more into the myriad activities necessary to set up for another shot.
    This time the whole scene was to run in close-up on Dirk, so Lallie was taken away for a brief respite that would presumably contribute to her precious tally of tutored set-time. The adultperformers had just re-established themselves under the smoker’s horse-chestnut, when Dirk stopped in ravenous mid-inhalation.
    ‘Christ,’ he remarked.
    Vera turned and saw a dark globule of blood had appeared under one of Dirk’s distinctively snubbed nostrils. It was already distending into a thickish trickle. It looked like make-up, straight out of Hammer – golden syrup and food colouring.
    ‘Your nose is bleeding,’ she informed him gratuitously.
    The second nostril began to bleed. After anxious consultations and the leading of Dirk to his caravan with his head tilted back at a forty-five-degree angle, Lallie was re-summoned for what Mike intended as some pick-up shots. Vera didn’t mind. Her own time was paid for, after all. But when Mike told Lallie what he wanted from her, the kid asked him, politely enough, if it wouldn’t make sense for her to run the whole scene again, shooting it on her.
    ‘Wouldn’t you rather wait until Dirk can do it with you, darling?’ Mike asked solicitously. Well, as solicitously as he could, given that Lallie’s suggestion would be the best use of everyone’s time.
    Lallie shrugged.
    ‘I’m not bothered,’ she told him. ‘He—’ she gestured to Derek – ‘can give me the mark so the sight-lines aren’t off.’
    So that’s what she did. She played the whole scene to a piece of tape on Derek’s forehead (he was slightly shorter than Dirk). Mike ordered two takes, but Vera, watching out of shot, could tell that he’d be happy to print the first, if he had any sense.
     
WOMAN
[to JUNE] Everything all right, love?
    JUNE
I’m fine. Aren’t I, Dad?
COLIN registers surprise at her invention. The woman sees it.
    JUNE
Me dad and me had come for a picnic but he was telling me off because I forgot to bring the sandwiches.
    WOMAN
Can we give you a lift?
    COLIN
You’re all right.
The car drives off. JUNE shoots COLIN a look.
     
    The look that Lallie gave Derek’s forehead was complicit, seductive and yet terribly, painfully innocent. A flick of the eyes that lasted less than a second. She gets it, thought Vera. She gets the whole thing. Afterwards, she wondered if it really could have been as good as she thought. It was like the momentary triumph of seeing a goal scored at a football match, without the benefit of the action replay. She hoped the editor would see it too, but there were no guarantees. Maybe Mike would decide the look was too knowing, that it was too dangerous to give the story that weight, although the script hinted at it, that the child was that powerful, but ultimately, of course, tragically, only as powerful as a child can be.
    Heading back to the caravans, Vera patted Lallie on the shoulder.
    ‘Good work there,’ she congratulated her. ‘Quite splendid.’
    Lallie rolled her eyes and contorted her mouth into a quick Barbra Streisand. ‘Gee, ya really think so?’ she spat in loud, third-hand Brooklynese. Vera walked on ahead. She could admire the talent without admiring the owner. It was almost a given in this business. Just because the kid was a genius, it didn’t mean Vera had to like her.

 
    T HERE WAS NO phone at the Brights’ house on Adelaide Road. In cases of particular, often criminal emergency, they used a call box at the end of the street. Letters were neither sent nor received. So there was no warning for Pauline whenever her mother reappeared after one of her mysterious periods of work. Joanne was usually exhausted, and slept for the first couple of days. But once she had revived, she changed the atmosphere of the house as no one else could. Her initial tiredness apart, she had none of the family lassitude, rather a