There was no doubt the proposal was an interesting one, so she sat there and gave it serious consideration for a good long while. Her incredible good fortune ten years ago in being catapulted from humble student to internationally recognised actress still continued to amaze her to this day, and she looked back on her time in Hollywood with mixed emotions. Although since returning to her studies she had been focusing on a career in art history, the idea of going back in front of the cameras still had its fascination.
Of course, she didn’t need to do it. Her savings, coupled with the syndication royalties her agent had fought tooth and nail to obtain for her – and which she was still receiving – for repeats of the series in no fewer than forty-five countries around the world were more than enough to live on. Now that she was away from Hollywood, she no longer needed expensive designer clothes, a PA, security or a housekeeper. She could live much more modestly and had been able to buy her own rather nice apartment on the top floor of an old Georgian townhouse, where she had been living while studying here in Bristol. And she still had money left over in the bank.
Although there were no immediate openings for her in the art history department in Bristol, she had already applied to half a dozen other universities, where she hoped to find a lecturing position. She had also sent CVs to a number of museums and two big auction houses, in the hope that they might be looking for a medieval art expert, and she had an interview scheduled for the following week in London, which sounded promising. So, all in all, why get involved in the Hollywood madhouse again?
As Zoë had predicted, the change from internationally recognised star to ordinary student had been a bit of a shock to the system, particularly for the first couple of years as she settled down in Bristol, but she now genuinely thought of her Pals years as another life, almost as if belonging to somebody else. Back in the UK, she had found fulfilment in a subject that kept her intellectually satisfied and she had relished the far quieter lifestyle, a world away from the glitzy, frenetic world of showbiz and the even tougher world of social media, which she still avoided at all costs. It hadn’t taken too long before her fellow students and tutors had got used to seeing her around and accepted her as one of their own. She had gradually dropped out of the media spotlight and she hadn’t been bothered by a paparazzo for several years. She had got used to the freedom, so could she see herself diving back into all that again?
And, of course, there was the matter of David.
She had met him a couple of years ago and they had been living together now for almost a year. He was five years older than her, almost thirty-six, and he was the rising star among the staff of the drama department of the university. She had fallen for his intelligence, his slightly reserved manner, which had come as a welcome change after so many of the conceited men she had met, and his good looks. Things between them had been going… all right, but she knew that now she had finished her studies, crunch time was approaching. Now that she was free to take a job anywhere in the world, was she ready to take that big step and move away? And if she did, how would he react? If this new project of Pals Forever were to take off, would she be prepared to leave him and head back to the States? How might he feel about going with her?
And the big unknown was whether she would want him to.
She checked out the other two emails and found them remarkably similar in content. Benny was clearly amazed that he had been asked to participate again after the public falling-out he and Zoë had had on set, which had culminated in a lot of bad language on both sides and his being escorted off the lot by Security. Layla’s email was as flowery as ever, laced with ‘darlings’, ‘supers’ and ‘amazings’, and it consisted of two distinct strands. The first concentrated on the same question Benny had asked – was Alice interested in the idea of the new series? The second was the news that her marriage to Harry had ended in divorce three years earlier and she had ‘never felt better’ as a result.
As far as Layla’s failed marriage was concerned, Alice had already heard about it via Millie and hadn’t been surprised. She had lost track of the number of times she herself had been propositioned and even groped by Harry during the recording of the final series, so it had been patently clear that his eyes – and his hands – were increasingly wandering and his days alongside Layla numbered.
As for whether Alice felt like getting involved in the new series, the more she thought about it the main sticking point would be working with Zoë, the overbearing director, once more. The idea of going back to all that stress was far from appealing, although she had to admit that a return to the TV screen wasn’t without its attraction. Finally, still very much undecided, she called Millie back to get her take on the proposal. It came as no surprise to find her enthusiastic, to the point of ecstatic. The reason for her delight was easy to identify – she was broke again.
Millie, just like the character she played in the sitcom, was a bit scatty. Both in her love life – the list of her failed relationships would cover many pages – and in her career, she had a habit of making shockingly bad decisions. Full-frontal nudity three years ago in a
