‘I’m sorry. My boyfriend wants to move to Spain, so I’m going with him.’
‘Fiona, I don’t think you realise what I’m offering you here. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. Shit like this doesn’t happen every day.’
‘Yeah, still not fussed, to be honest. I never wanted to be an actress anyway. I only came along for a laugh. Sorry if I wasted your time.’
With shaking hands, she’d slammed the phone back down on the receiver, almost dislodging it from the wall.
Then she’d stood there, and stared at it. It was down to two, he’d said. Fiona had been number one. Was there any slight, tiny, miraculous chance that she could be the second on his list? If she was, she’d find out soon enough, because they’d all given him the same number so they could be contacted at the pre-set time.
The clock on the wall ticked. Thirty seconds. A minute. She knew the girls out in the dinner hall would be wondering where she’d got to. Still she didn’t move.
Another minute. And another. Still staring.
Suddenly, Maggie, the head cook, had burst through the door. ‘Olive! What the hell is the hold-up? It’s like feeding time at the zoo out there. Get yourself back out and get to work oryou’ll be on the dole queue by the end of the day, poor Vi’s niece or not!’
She’d felt the flames in her cheeks, the twist of pain in her chest, as she’d mumbled, ‘Sorry, Maggie,’ and begun to move. She couldn’t lose this job or she’d starve. Hell, she was near starving already.
The thought had flashed through her mind that at least Nancy hadn’t got the part either.
And that’s when the phone had rung again. To Maggie’s very obvious exasperation, Olive had snatched the receiver up, this time lowering her tone so that she sounded completely different from the voice she’d used earlier.
‘Hi,’ she’d said, because it was all she could manage.
He’d opened the call with exactly the same words as last time. ‘Aye, erm, yes, hello. This is Alf Cotter. Can I speak to…’ He paused and she’d heard the rustling of paper, as if he was checking something on a list.
Who was it? Her or Nancy? And if it was Nancy, did she have the bottle to pull the same stunt twice?
‘Erm, aye. Can I speak to Olive Docherty?’
She’d almost fainted. ‘This… this is Olive.’
‘Aye, Olive, I’ve got good news for you, lass. I’ve thought long and hard about it, and my gut is telling me that you are Agnes McGlinchy, so…’
Olive Docherty had put her hand over the receiver, set her eyes on her furiously gesticulating boss. ‘Maggie,’ she’d whispered, still blocking the microphone so Alf couldn’t hear. ‘You can stick yer job.’
When the call ended, she hadn’t even stuck around to tell Fiona or Nancy. She’d just grabbed her jacket, her beat up handbag, swapped her work shoes for her boots and charged out the door without so much as a backwards glance.
Destination – whole new life.
Before the first show aired, her management had advised her to change her name to something more memorable and Odette Devine was born. Olive Docherty was left in the dinner hall of Weirbridge Primary School. If the first character she’d created was Odette, the second was Agnes McGlinchy. And now, forty years later, she was listening to someone tell the world that the job should never have been hers.
‘The thing was,’ the woman on the screen spat the words with bitter anger, ‘I would never have found out if I hadn’t met Alf Cotter in a bar years later. He was an old man by then, barely bloody alive, but recognised me. Said I was the only person he’d ever called who’d turned down a role. Asked me if I was just home visiting from Spain and of course I had no idea what he was talking about. It soon came out, though. I thought about going public then, but who would believe the ramblings of an old man and a wannabe that never was? Well, I’m telling the world now, and I don’t care who believes me because it’s true.’
‘Is it, Odette? Is it true?’ Calvin asked her, whispering in her ear.
Before she could answer him, the room lurched, spun, and she felt entirely discombobulated. It took every bit of her strength to speak.
‘Calvin, can you get me out of here?’ She managed to push herself to her feet, then paused, leaning on the table.
‘But is it true?’ she repeated Calvin’s question, loud enough to reach the ears of everyone in the room, before delivering the answer everyone was waiting to hear.
‘Every bloody word.’
30
TRESS
Tress jumped up to help Calvin support Odette out of the room, ignoring the atmosphere of astonishment that had settled around them. She was appalled. Those people were supposed to be Odette’s friends and colleagues and yet everyone except Calvin and the canteen ladies had sat there and lapped up the scandal, including that cretin, Rex Marino. Urgh. This was a world that she didn’t want to be a part of. In that moment, it didn’t matter to her what Odette had done – she wasn’t going to witness a pile-on and the public humiliation of an elderly lady who was clearly not in the best of health.
