Page 49 of Fake It 'til You Make It

Which reminds me… I pick up my phone to message Dee but see a WhatsApp notification from her.

Got you a job as an extra if you want it? On set Monday at 8a.m. $75 for the day x

An extra. Like, acting. Great. Perfect. Invaluable insight to help make my white lies stick and some much-needed income.

Except, I can’t act. Then again, don’t extras just sort of mill around the place, filling spaces?

I reply to tell her I’ll do it because for one thing, beggars can’t be choosers and, for another, at least I’ll technically be an actress, therefore I won’t need to lie to Mike and he’ll think he’s going to Canada with someone a bit more like him and a lot less like me.

When my family meet Mike, they need to believe he’s my new boyfriend. To pull that off, Mike and I need to be great at bluffing and genuinely speedy at learning all the things a couple need to know about each other. But Mike thinks I’m an actress, so I not only need to know a few things about being an actress, but I also need for my family to believe I’m an actress if Mike brings it up.

Because one, he won’t be able to lie to my family about me. And two, he’s a professional athlete; there’s no way I can confess to being an auditor.

Whoever heard the story about the MLB player and the auditor who fell in love?

No one. Ever.

19

TED

‘I’m just giving you a heads up that Roman asked Kimberley this morning to book two flights to New York,’ Mel tells me. It’s Monday and another working week has begun. ‘I’ve only just found out – Kimberley was gossiping by the water cooler.’

I can tell from her face, displayed on the screen of my laptop, that Mel told Roman’s PA exactly where she could shove her water cooler chat. The pair don’t get along in any event, not since Kimberley spread a rumor about Mel flirting with a gay guy in a bar and getting knocked back. I don’t know whether it was true or not but Mel didn’t take kindly to her personal life being discussed in the office. Something I can entirely empathize with.

Suddenly, my hasty suggestion on Saturday night that I be Abbey’s fake date to her parents’ vow renewal doesn’t seem so absurd. What are the chances her parents want to move up the renewal of their vows, to like, today? Or at least that Abbey wants to arrive two and a half weeks early?

I take a tactical drink of coffee, both to process the fact my ex-best friend and ex-fiancée, now a couple, are imminently wingingtheir way from the west coast in my direction, and to hide my humiliation.

I’m Mel’s boss. I’m a grown man. I’m a successful businessman. Yet I’ve been taken for an idiot. Played by two of the people in the world I’m supposed to be able to trust implicitly. Whom Ididtrust implicitly.

‘Can you book me on a flight home asap?’ I ask the question tongue in cheek. I know I can’t play cat and mouse forever; I need to tackle this eventually. ‘Joking.’ Kind of.

‘You don’t have to put a front on things for me, Ted. They’re total shitheads. Both of them. Sorry, you know I’m Team Ted.’

I smile my gratitude yet, incongruously, I feel protective of Roman and Fleur, as if I don’t want anyone to hate on them except me.

‘Alright, let’s get down to business. How is my Monday looking?’ I ask, abruptly bringing talk of my personal turmoil to a close.

We speak for another quarter of an hour about my calendar, my tasks for today and where I need Mel’s support. It’s all standard stuff, a regular Monday.

At least I can rely on the constant of work, I think as our video call ends. Just as quickly, I remember I can’t, because Roman wants to sell out and whilst I want to stay in our partnership, or I did before recent catastrophic events, our working together has become, in the words of my lawyer, untenable.

Unfortunately, it seems our partnership documents don’t legislate for one of the partners having an affair with the other’s wife-to-be, and so my options are to sell the partnership or disband it. Neither appeals to me and the only alternative, if Roman agreed, would be for me to buy his share but realistically, I can’t run the business alone, nor can I afford to buy him out.

So, in a nutshell, my lawyer has used many words, manypages and many of my dollars to tell me I’m fucked. Personally and commercially between a rock and a hard place. Having salt rubbed into my wounds. Sitting on a powder keg between two fires.

I have been totally and utterly shafted by Roman.

20

ABBEY

After a second consecutive day of arriving on the set of my sister’s TV show at 5.45a.m. (I never thought I’d consider the sun a late riser), I was made to look like a vampire (fangs, cape, the works) and spent five hours jumping off a wall onto a pavement over and over until the scene had been through twenty-odd takes and two re-writes.

Following a short break for water and a freebie protein bar, I was whisked off to a dressing trailer again, where white paint was scrubbed from my face and I was made to look like someone out ofBridgertondressed for a stroll through Central Park.

It was hot, relentless, tiring work.

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