| Nell dressed in the same clothes she’d worn to the |  |
| audition. A large blue, cotton-knit top over faded |
| jeans, with her hair tied high, so that when she |
| turned her head the pale ends of it swished against |
| her face. Yes, she thought, as she checked herself |
| in the mirror, smudging a line of black under each |
| terrified eye, that’s good, and she held tight to the |
| thought that however plump and freckled, she was |
| the same girl who, six months before, had stood |
| before the board of Drama Arts and performed a |
| Shakespeare monologue and a modern. |
| ‘You off?’ It was her landlord, leaning over the |
| banister from his rooms above. Nell forced herself |
| to smile up at him, unshaven, a mug of coffee in |
| his hand. It embarrassed her, this unexpected |
| involvement in her life. ‘First day,’ she told him, |
| and heaving her bag on to her shoulder, she swung out through the door. |
| The bus was packed. Nell squeezed on and spiralled up the stairs, and |
| pushing her way towards the back, she clung to a pole as slowly, haltingly, the |
| bus moved forward along Holloway Road. Beside her a man jammed an elbow |
| into her side as he wrestled with a newspaper, and a woman on a nearby seat |
| struggled with a small boy. ‘Shh,’ the woman said, ‘stay still, why don’t you,’ and |
| she tried to slide the slippery weight of him up on to her knee. No one knows, |
| Nell thought as she looked down on the hurrying heads of the people below. No |
| one knows that I’ve been chosen. And she almost flew forward as the bus came |
| to a stop. The doors swished open, passengers streamed off, and one girl |
| clattered up the stairs, breezy and beautiful, a silk scarf wound round her neck. |
| Nell’s heart clamped tight. What if she’d been chosen, too? Nell knew it was |
| crazy, but this was exactly the kind of girl that should be starting drama school, |
| and she imagined them arriving together and being told, sorry, we’re oversubscribed, |
| only one of you can stay. |
|
