‘I know.' He ruffled his hair, cut spikily short and dyed white-blond for his role in the film. ‘I keep catching sight of myself in mirrors and getting the shock of my life. Yet another reason why being a screenwriter beats acting.'
They'd kept in touch by text, but Eddie had been vague about that side of things. Lily said, ‘Did you finish that screenplay, the one that was giving you so much trouble?'
Eddie grimaced and shook his head. ‘It was a nightmare. I gave up on it in the end. How's everyone at home?'
‘All good.' Lily had kept him updated with the goings-on in Stanton Langley. ‘Oh, I know what I meant to tell you! In the last couple of weeks, I've heard three different people talking about things that have happened in the village and each of them used you as a time reference. It was all "When Eddie was here" or "Just after Eddie left". It's like you're a memorable date in the diary, like Christmas.'
He looked pleased. ‘That's quite an accolade.'
‘You're the only VIP we've ever had in the village. You never know,' said Lily, ‘we might end up with a giant statue of you up on a plinth outside the pub.'
Dan emerged from the office. ‘Everything's sorted. All ready to go?'
‘Absolutely.' Eddie was already holding his passport, phone and wallet; there was nothing else he needed. Pointing to the car park, he said to Lily, ‘My driver's waiting to take you over to the film set. Mira's going to look after you. We'll be back by five thirty.'
‘I'll be fine.' Lily was looking forward to seeing Mira Knowles again. ‘I can't wait to watch the filming.'
‘Oh,' Eddie turned back as he and Dan headed across the tarmac to the little plane, ‘and there's something I want you to take a look at, too. It's in the car.'
‘What is it?'
His smile was enigmatic. ‘Something.'
‘Is it a photograph?' said Lily.
‘No.'
‘A boa constrictor?'
‘Not a boa constrictor either, amazingly.'
‘Will I like it?'
‘No idea. I hope so.' As he followed Dan to the plane, Eddie called over his shoulder, ‘You can tell me when I get back.'
The car was an elongated black Mercedes. The driver waiting to open the rear door for her wore a smart grey suit and tie. It was a long way from lanky Dave in his jeans and holey jumpers who ran Dave's Cabs in Stanton Langley and regarded a day without pickled onion Monster Munch as a day wasted.
But that was real life. This, today, was the fantasy one Lily found fun to visit but still undeniably weird to experience. She paused to watch as the plane containing Dan and Eddie left the ground and rose into the duck-egg-blue sky, bound for Paris.
Then she climbed into the back of the limo and saw the A4-sized envelope waiting on the seat with her name on it.
Inside was a handwritten note from Eddie:
That last screenplay you kept asking me about? It was awful and I gave up on it weeks ago. Wrote this instead. Have a read and let me know what you think. Be honest.
E xx
PS Yes, I know, you're always honest!
The note was attached to the title page of a printed-out screenplay. Lily did a metaphorical double-take when she saw what it was called, because it was how he'd always jokily referred to his initial stay in Stanton Langley:
Five Days Away.
They'd arrived at the film set. It had taken forty minutes to get there from the airfield, but Lily had barely noticed the journey, so engrossed had she been in the film script. Having struggled so badly with the last one, Eddie had evidently taken to heart the age-old advice to write what you know. She raced through it, half dreading what the ending might be. When she saw what he'd written, she closed her eyes and rested her head back against the cream leather upholstery. To her huge surprise, a tear spilled out of each eye and slid down either side of her neck.
It wasn't real life, obviously. Not real real life, because that would never allow such a neat storyline with all the loose ends tied up. But enough of it was real to make it instantly recognisable. In the opening scene, Eddie finds himself holed up inside a central London hotel, besieged by paparazzi and at the end of his tether. His manager and his publicist are giving him grief and he needs to escape.
Cut to: In the dead of the night, he's secretly bundled into a tiny Cotswold cottage belonging to someone he's never met. The woman promises on her life not to tell a soul he's hiding there.
Cut to: Eddie is alone in the cottage when someone starts trying to break in by picking the lock of the front door. He comes face to face with Lily, who lives in the village and is already having a pretty eventful day of her own. It's her twenty-fifth birthday, and she's just read a life-changing letter written to her by her mother, who died when she was eight-
Lily's eyes snapped open as the window slid down and she heard a familiar voice saying, ‘What's she doing? Is she fast asleep? Lily, it's me! WAKE UP!'
To be fair, the voice would probably be familiar to a large percentage of people on this planet.
‘I'm not asleep … Oh good grief.' Lily hastily brushed away the tears. ‘He didn't warn me you were going to look like that.'
Mira grinned. She was wearing a nun's habit, a huge prosthetic nose and a fake whiskery wart on her cheek. Well, hopefully a fake whiskery wart.
‘Sorry! Isn't it brilliant, though? I can go out like this and nobody gives me a second look.'
Lily raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?'
‘Oh well, not in the habit. But if I change into jeans and a sweater, I can walk around St Carys and no one even knows it's me. So cool. Anyhow, how are you?' Mira enveloped Lily in an enthusiastic embrace. ‘Try not to knock my wart off!'
For the next hour, Lily was shown around the location where they were filming and introduced to the rest of the cast and crew. The action was taking place in and around a clifftop hotel overlooking a surfing bay on the north Cornwall coast. The film was an action comedy drama featuring a billion-dollar heist engineered by a seventy-five-year-old grandmother and her niece, played by Mira masquerading as a nun. Eddie's role was that of the detective aiming to foil their dastardly plot.
Lily watched from the clifftop as Mira was filmed scrambling down the steep path to the beach in her nun's habit and a pair of union Jack wellingtons; she then had to race across the beach and throw herself down on the sand behind a faded blue rowing boat.
It all took ages. The director wanted endless retakes, and each one meant Mira having to be rigorously de-sanded and sent back up the path before setting off again.
‘I'm exhausted just watching it,' Lily said to the girl next to her. The girl's name was Sophie and she was married to the owner-manager of the hotel in whose grounds they were standing.
Sophie, who'd been taking photos of the filming with an impressive-looking Nikon, said, ‘And it's easy to slip, too. I once tried to stop a pushchair that was falling down that path.' She pulled a face. ‘It's steeper than it looks from up here.'
‘Did you manage to stop it?'
‘Just about. Wasn't a soft landing, though. I was pretty battered and bruised.'
‘Ouch.' Lily winced in sympathy and nodded at Sophie's front. ‘Were you … ?'
‘Oh no, thank goodness.' Sophie's eyes danced as she briefly rested her free hand on the watermelon-sized bump beneath her sweatshirt. ‘That was two years ago, way before this happened. I take a bit more care getting down that path now I'm pregnant.'
By three o'clock, the shooting moved on to involve other actors, and Mira's work was done for the day. Having changed out of her habit and peeled off her wart, she and Lily retired to a quiet corner of the hotel terrace for coffee and cake.
‘So have you noticed how wonderfully patient I've been?' Mira finished a slender slice of lemon torte and licked her fingers with relish. ‘All afternoon I've been dying to ask you and I haven't!'
Lily kept a straight face, because Mira was as transparent as a child. ‘You want to play Squares?'
‘Well obviously I want to play Squares. I love Squares. But right now I want to know what you think about Eddie's screenplay.'
‘Have you read it?'
‘Of course I've read it!'
‘And?' said Lily. ‘What's your verdict?'
‘Well I think it's completely amazing. But I want to know what you think.'
Lily dropped another spoonful of sugar into her coffee cup and looked thoughtfully across the table at Mira. ‘I think … you haven't read it.'