Page 94 of Musical Games
‘See, Jamie, I—’
The rest of her sentence was lost as she tumbled down the stairs with a scream.
* * *
Sam’slast week on the set ofElm Tree Lanewas surreal. Lorraine, Shelley and all her other friends rallied around her, making her feel truly like the star of the show. Ian made a great effort to make her feel small, but his efforts were diminished by the fact everyone acted as if he were invisible. Sam had point-blank refused to spend a day hanging off the top of a multi-storey car park for her death scene, so the storyline was changed to a hit and run. She went through the motions, but her mind was already on the future. If she kept looking forward, there was no space to think about Jamie.
He hadn’t rung or messaged her and wasn’t on social media, so she couldn’t stalk him. She didn’t know if he was checking any of her accounts, so she made sure if he did, all he saw were daily updates documenting the minutiae of her fabulous new life. Everything was filtered and spun to perfection. She’d finally made it. She was off to LA at the invitation of Brad Bauer.
What she didn’t share with any of her followers was that she had no idea if any of it was going to work. Brad hadn’t offered her an acting job but the chance to collaborate with big-shot musicians and producers on the score for a new film he was working on. It was so secret she didn’t even know what it was about. But she didn’t let that stop her focusing on everything LA had to offer. She was escaping the greyness and small-mindedness of the UK into sunshine, networking, glitz and glamour. She was finally going to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right people.
The plane toucheddown in LAX and a rainstorm. After eleven hours breathing in recirculated air, she was desiccated. Her skin was dry, her throat raw and her head throbbing. She pressed her face against the cool glass of the window but all she saw were raindrops running into each other, then squat buildings and palm trees buffeted by the lashing rain. Brad had arranged a driver to take her to an apartment in West Hollywood and when she exited arrivals, a small man with an enormous smile introduced himself.
‘Miss Adamson! I’m Mikey. Let me take your bags.’
‘Hi, how did you know who I was?’
He presented his phone and swiped through photos of her.
‘Mr Bauer also sent me a recording of your concert in the Scottish bar. Man, that was something else. Do you know the royal family?’
‘Er. Personally?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Um, no.’
Mikey shrugged. ‘Never mind.’
‘Did you think I might?’
He grinned at her. ‘Not really, but I ask every British person the same question. Who knows? One day I might get lucky.’
Mikey drove them to where Brad had an apartment. It was mid-afternoon in LA, but she was ready for bed. The apartment was small and decorated in warm chocolate browns and rich creams. Mikey opened the fridge, which was packed with food.
‘There’s food here to start you off and an information pack on the table with everything you need to know. I’ll give you my number now and you call if you need anything. It’s on twenty-four seven. You can walk to the studio from here, but I’ll drop by tomorrow at nine to take you there for your first day. Do you have any questions, Miss Adamson?’
‘Please call me Sam. I don’t need anything except for bed. This is so beautiful. Thank you, it’s perfect.’
Mikey grinned. ‘This apartment’s my favourite too. Brad put you in Scandi to celebrate your roots.’
‘Scandi?’
‘Yes, we’ve got Scandi, Bali, Santorini, Miami and Nairobi in this complex.’
‘Do they all have to end with an “ee” sound?’
‘Mr Bauer was insistent. We did have one called Paris, but when people didn’t pronounce it properly, he changed it.’
After he left, Sam unpacked and took a shower. Even though noises from outside filtered in, it wasn’t enough to fill the empty space inside her. She needed chatter, distractions and people. She put some upbeat music on her phone, but the sound grated so she turned it off.
The bed in her room was huge. It was an island and she was the only inhabitant. She hugged a pillow against her aching chest and allowed herself to think of Jamie. It would be getting late in Kinloch now. Was he in bed too? She remembered falling asleep in his arms, their limbs tangled, the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the tickling of his hair against her cheek, the sound of Morag snoring from the room next door. She wiped her eyes with the bedsheet. It all seemed so very far away.
* * *
The robotic chimeof the doorbell rang with the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ for the sixty-fourth time that day. Jamie ground his teeth, went to the bottom of the stairs and called up, ‘I’m coming.’
Morag was not a very good patient. The downstairs toilet was too difficult to navigate with her lower leg in plaster, so she was mostly confined to upstairs for easy access to the bathroom. When Jamie developed selective hearing to her yelling every couple of minutes with new demands, she got Fiona to buy her a doorbell and kept the ringer by the bed.
