Page 4 of Courting Trouble
Cassie finished packing up her stuff and opened her calendar app. Four more lessons this week. Maybe a fifth if Trish managed to get herself a new nanny after the last one fled. She certainly had the space.
Then she checked her banking app and looked at the number in her current account. It wasn’t the kind of number that allowed you to say no to shitty opportunities with facile actresses.
She texted Anthea an incredibly reluctantFine.
Three
The video had barely 2,500 views. Its title, blunt and unpunctuated, read:‘cassie thorne absolute beast mode 2015.’
Cassie Thorne, at twenty-ish, was a steam engine in shorts, broad-shouldered and sturdy. Her coal-black hair was pulled back tightly, a single braid swinging with each powerful swing of the racket. She wore a faint scowl permanently etched above sharp, watchful dark blue eyes. Every swing made Delilah flinch before the ball even left the racket.
‘Christ,’ she muttered, eyes glued to the screen, ‘what’s she going to do tome?’
She closed the laptop with a soft click and dropped her head back against the pillows. She had to remind herself that she wasn’t fragile. She’d done laundry detergent pod commercials at dawn, delivered lines to empty rooms for industrial training videos, worked unpaid background gigs in period dramas, and spent hours rehearsing for theatre auditions that led nowhere. She’d stood outside in all weathers, tireless and chipper and prepared.
So six weeks of tennis wouldn’t kill her. In theory. But could she really thrive under the tutelage of an Amazon warrior with a face like thunder?
She called her agent for the third time that morning. ‘Ashley?’
Ashley sounded distracted. ‘What now?’
‘She reallyneversmiles.’
There was a pause.
‘You mean Cassie Thorne?’
‘Mm.’
‘Even in the thumbnails, she looks murderous.’
Ashley laughed. ‘I didn’t hire her to tell you jokes. I hired her to make you a tennis player. As far as anyone knows.’
‘But she scares me,’ Delilah admitted.
‘She’s the real deal. And you don’t have time to shop around. You need to look like you’ve been training your whole life. She scares you? Good. You need scaring. It’s great motivation.’
‘Great,’ she said flatly. ‘Can’t wait to be emotionally abused into athleticism.’
‘You’ll love her,’ Ashley said a little too quickly. ‘Or you’ll be too exhausted to notice you hate her. Either way.’
Delilah lay back down, phone still in hand. She opened Instagram and typed in ‘Cassie Thorne.’
Nothing. Not a single post. No blue check. No grid, no stories, no highlight reels of morning smoothies and protein partnerships.
She tried Twitter. Same result. She just wanted one little thing that would make her feel like Cassie Thorne was a human being. But no. Cassie Thorne was a mystery. A terrifying puzzle.
A notification popped up on her phone.REHEARSAL SCHEDULE FINAL.
It should have been a big moment for her. To open that sheet and see her name at the top of the call sheet. If the date wasn’t right next to it. Six weeks. Forty-two days to figure out how to play a globally famous tennis player.
Delilah stared at the ceiling.
Six weeks.
She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, wondering if it was too late to back out of all of this and get a job at Tesco.
Four
