Not Dead Yet

Guy Batchelor took a couple of steps forward and peered down. Instantly he stepped back a pace, in shock.
    ‘Oh shit,’ he said.

112
    ‘Where – the – fuck – is – she…?’ Larry Brooker glared at Barnaby Katz, the Line Producer, his voice tight with fury. They were standing by the doorway, inside the Banqueting Room of the Pavilion. Thirty actors, including all the rest of their stars – Judd Halpern, Hugh Bonneville, Joseph Fiennes and Emily Watson – were seated around the table, waiting and looking increasingly impatient as they grew hotter and sweatier in their costumes and wigs. All the film lights were on, bathing everyone at the table in a surreal glow – and roasting them at the same time.
    The table had been temporarily botched back together. Above it was a small but gaping hole in the dome, where the chandelier had been hanging just twenty-four hours ago.
    Katz raised his arms in a shrug of helplessness. His hairline appeared to have receded a couple of inches in the past few days of constant stress.
    ‘I knocked on her trailer door twenty minutes ago and someone shouted she’d be out in a few moments.’ He adjusted his headset then spoke urgently into it. ‘Joe, any sign of Gaia?’
    Brooker checked his watch. ‘Not twenty minutes ago, Barnaby. That was thirty minutes ago. Prima donnas! God I hate them. Goddamn actresses! Thirty fucking minutes she’s kept us.’ He turned to the director, Jack Jordan. ‘You know what thirty minutes costs us, don’t you, Jack?’
    Jordan gave a benign shrug, long used to being messed around by out-of-control egos on both side of the lens. With his mane of white hair flowing from beneath his baseball cap, the veteran film-maker looked as ever like an ancient soothsayer and, true to that persona, was keeping his calm. He needed to. This was the most important scene in the movie and with every single one of the stars featuring, the most expensive. The money shot .
    Brooker banged his fists together. ‘This is ridiculous. Has someonepissed her off today or what?’ He glared at Jordan. ‘Have you had another argument with her over her lines?’
    ‘Darling, I haven’t had a peep out of her since yesterday. She was as good as gold last time we spoke. Just give her a few more minutes. She has to be patient for her heavy make-up and her wig is damned uncomfortable, it tickles her face, poor love.’
    Poor love, Brooker thought, cynically. Gaia was getting paid fifteen million bucks for just seven weeks’ work. He could put up with his face being tickled for seven weeks for that kind of dough, he thought.
    ‘Goddamn ridiculous wig,’ Brooker said. ‘Can hardly see her face. Makes her look like a sheep in a corset. I’m paying all this goddamn money to have Gaia, and we could have had anyone inside that dress and hair.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Five minutes. If she’s not on set in five minutes I’m gonna – I’m gonna…’ He hesitated, wary of making a fool of himself and of upsetting the icon. The truth was, when you worked on a small independent production with an actress as big as Gaia, you had to tread carefully. Irritate her and she might start to slow down even more and run you days – if not weeks – over schedule, with all its crippling consequences. There had already been a couple of occasions during this past week when Gaia, turning suddenly imperious, made Brooker realize that, without ever saying as much, she knew very well that there was only one reason he had managed to get this movie into production. That all of them were only here making this movie for that same one reason.
    Which was, that she, Gaia, had said yes .

113
    It took Guy Batchelor a moment to pluck up the courage to step forward again and look back into the chest freezer. The cold air swirling around him felt part of the same ice that was coursing his veins.
    A human head lay on the bottom, face up, between several packs of frozen peas, beans and broccoli, like some hideous ornament. A man’s face. The flesh was grey, flecked with frost, and the hair was coated with frost, as if he were wearing a white beanie. The eyes were shrunken, like tiny marbles.
    Despite the discoloration and the patches obscured by frost, he recognized the face instantly from the photographs he had seen: Myles Royce, winner of the auction for Gaia’s yellow tweed suit.
    As he turned away and stepped back into the kitchen, Brett Wallace said, ‘Is that the bit you’re missing