The Road To Her Part 1

The Road to Her.

By KE Payne.

Synopsis.

Sparks fly when twenty-year-old Holly Croft, star of the UK soap Portobello Road, meets Elise Manford, the actress who's going to play her on-screen love interest in the soap's first ever lesbian storyline.

Enigmatic Elise's super-confident att.i.tude and unwelcome advice drives Holly to distraction at first, but as fans go wild over the storyline, and the pair start to spend more and more time together, Holly begins to see another side to her costar. Liking what she sees, Holly slowly finds herself falling in love, but can she ignore her growing attraction to Elise when the lines between fact and fiction begin to blur?.

Acknowledgments.

Creating a book doesn't just happen by magic, and so I have some fabulous people to thank for getting this, my fourth novel, through the publis.h.i.+ng process and onto book shelves. Firstly, the lovely people at Bold Strokes Books who do such a brilliant job: Radclyffe for welcoming me to the BSB family in the first place, to Lynda Sandoval and Ruth Sternglantz for guiding me through the editing maze, and to Sheri for going with my choice of cover and turning it into something even more amazing. I'm also truly grateful to each and every other person who works tirelessly behind the scenes at BSB and who made publis.h.i.+ng this book such a pain-free journey for me. Thank you all.

I'm indebted to Sarah Martin, for not only being an awesome beta reader and giving up her precious time to read my work, but also for her constant encouragement and support. I'm always telling you how grateful I am, Smartie, but seriously-thank you! A ma.s.sive thanks also to Emma for your funny and encouraging e-mails over the last few months that have all driven home to me just how important it is to never let the b.u.g.g.e.rs get me down and to always persevere with my goals. PS: Tell your gran to keep reading the PFs too!

To BJ-no words will ever be enough to let you know how much I appreciate everything you do for me. Without your constant love and support, I would never be able carry on with what I love doing, so thank you.

Finally, a huge thank you to all the readers who continue to buy my books, and who take the time to contact me to say how much they enjoy them. I greatly appreciate every e-mail, Facebook comment, and Tweet that you send me, and your continued support is immensely important to me. Thank you all so much.

Chapter One.

"So, Holly, what do you think?" Kevin Driffield sat back in his chair, his small speech over. "We reckon having a lesbian character is going to really b.u.mp up the ratings this year." He steepled his fingers and looked at me from across his desk, the flicker of a smile on his round, nondescript face.

"We're thinking this could be the most popular gay storyline since Martin and Dexter in The Escape two years ago." Kevin's a.s.sistant producer, Susie Abeca.s.sis spoke before I'd had the chance to answer Kevin's question. "Are you up for it?"

"And Jasmine Hunter's been chosen to be that character?" I met Kevin's continued look and mirrored his smile.

"Having an already-established character such as Martin fall in love with a newcomer like Dexter was an instant hit with the fans," Kevin said. "People are still talking about it, even now."

"And now we want to recreate that success in Portobello Road with you." Susie spoke animatedly.

My name is Holly Croft, and I guess if you're older than twenty-five then you'll possibly never have heard of me, but I'm an actress in a well-known early evening soap opera which half of the UK's teenage population go absolutely crazy for. It's set in and around the Portobello Road area of West London and is called, appropriately enough, Portobello Road.

Well, over the years, Portobello Road has totally changed my life. I'm twenty now, but I've been in it since I was just twelve. I play a character called Jasmine Hunter, and fans of the show have followed her through thick and thin: through her school years, all the way through her parents' long and bitter divorce, to her first day at university, and right through to her now apparently falling in love with a girl.

"We thought it was time Jasmine came to the fore," Kevin was now saying, tilting back on his large plush leather chair-the sort that executives are fond of using-and leaning back so far I was convinced he'd topple over backwards and clatter to the floor. "She's been too long just in the background, but we feel she has potential..."

"More potential than she's being given at the moment," Susie said, c.o.c.king her head to one side and smiling so much her eyes crinkled. "We think you have potential, too, Holly."

I looked down at the sample script on the table in front of me and chewed at the inside of my lip. Jasmine was being taken in a totally different direction, and to be honest, I couldn't decide whether I was nervous or excited at the prospect of her having such a major storyline after years of just being "that Hunter kid." Just recently, the most exciting thing that had happened to Jasmine was her pa.s.sing her driving test and her parents divorcing last year after her father was caught in flagrante delicto with his secretary. But this? This was something else.

"Well, I'm flattered," I began, "uh, flattered that you'd give me such a huge storyline, and that you think I can handle it." I looked down at the script again.

"We want this storyline to run for at least the next year." Kevin leaned forward in his chair. He placed his arms on the table and looked at me intently, then picked up his copy of the script and ran his eyes over it. "It's going to be a terrific love story, a real heart tugger. We don't want it to be just a token piece, shoved in somewhere between Shane's hair transplant and Hazel's nervous breakdown."

"Casey Fletcher-Jasmine's love interest-is a brand-new character," Susie said, reading from a printed sheet in front of her. "She's eighteen-the same age as Jasmine-and they'll meet at university."

"They'll be friends to begin with," Kevin continued, "but then they'll both begin to realise that they want something more than just friends.h.i.+p."

"We want Jasmine to struggle with her feelings, deny she likes her, all that sort of stuff," Susie said, glancing up at me then looking back down at her sheet of paper, circling something on it with a pen. "We'll keep the viewers hanging on a good while with the cla.s.sic will they, won't they scenario before they both confess their feelings for each other."

"And Casey certainly won't just be a flash affair for Jasmine," Kevin added. "It'll be a proper, long-lasting, and loving relations.h.i.+p."

"The Martin and Dexter storyline will pale into insignificance compared to what we've got in store." Susie nodded in agreement.

I looked from Susie to Kevin and back again, adrenaline beginning to fizz inside me.

"It sounds awesome!" I looked back at Susie and then tried, unsuccessfully, to sneak a glimpse at what was written on her sheet of paper.

"So are you up for it?" Kevin finally asked. "You think you can handle the pressure?"

"Up for it?" I said. "My G.o.d, yeah, I'm up for it!" I tried to contain my excitement. "And, yes, I can totally handle the pressure."

I was more than keen to be involved in the process right from the off as well. I was protective of Jasmine. Of course I was. I'd grown up with her, so it was important she got the right girl, and it was important that the writers did the whole story perfectly. I loved Jasmine and I loved the show. Portobello Road had given me a good life for the last eight years; it had given me money, and perhaps while it hadn't given me as much fame as it had some of the other cast members, it had given me security and many loyal and fantastic friends and colleagues. I was very lucky. It had also given me the opportunity to move from my parents' home in the countryside and buy myself a small but fabulous modern apartment overlooking the Thames. I was so privileged and I knew it; there weren't many twenty-year-olds out there that could afford their own place, let alone one in the centre of London.

Yes, I loved PR, I loved Jasmine, and right now I totally loved Kevin and Susie.

"Excellent!" Susie reached over and pulled out a small pile of papers from a blue file and absent-mindedly flicked through them. "Now we know you're happy to go ahead, we'll contact some agents and get some auditions going for the part of Casey," she said, putting the papers back into the file. "Then get whoever we choose to do a screen test with you, okay?"

"We'll get the ball rolling this afternoon if you're okay with that." Kevin gathered his papers together and stood up to leave.

"I'm more than okay with that," I said, already thinking ahead to how fabulous it was all going to be.

The next week pa.s.sed by in a flurry of the usual routines, during which I didn't hear any more about the new plotline. Instead, my days mainly consisted of hours pa.s.sed in the green room and canteen at the PR studios, which were located in a large complex around five miles outside of London, where I would learn my lines and chat with my co-stars while I waited to be called on set. This was usually followed by a few brief scenes shot with my on-screen family, particularly my on-screen mum, a lovely, vivacious, and totally scatty actress called Bella Hamilton, who was currently Soaps' Favourite Mother, according to Just Soap magazine.

But it was shortly after lunchtime-ten days after I'd first heard about my new storyline and just as I was packing my things together, ready to leave again for the day-when Susie came into the green room with a file under her arm and a look of importance on her face.

"So we chose our Casey last week," she said, sitting next to me on the sofa and taking a piece of paper from her file. "She had her audition on Thursday and we're really pleased with her."

I put my bag to one side, interested. My scenes over the last few weeks with Bella had been fun enough, but the thought of now doing something completely different was more than appealing.

"We interviewed four actresses altogether." Susie shuffled herself back on the sofa and crossed one leg over the other. "Elise was, by far, the best of them all."

"Elise?"

"Elise Manford," Susie said. "Seems very nice. I think you'll like her."

"I hope so," I said, suddenly nervous.

"We'd like you to do a screen test with her this afternoon, make sure the chemistry's there," Susie said. "We're very keen for you to be involved in every stage of the process."

Elise Manford. I said her name to myself, racking my brains as to whether I'd ever heard of her before. I hadn't.

"Be back at three, can you?" Susie asked.

"Sure," I said, glancing at the piece of paper still in her hand.

"Have a read of this," Susie said, handing me the papers, "so that you're not coming in completely blind this afternoon."

I took the script, an excited tightness building in my chest at the thought of what might be written in it.

"It's a short sample scene between Jasmine and Casey, nothing too long, just about five minutes' worth," Susie said, hauling herself up from the sofa.

I glanced at it and saw that the scene had been split fifty-fifty between Jasmine and Casey so that we each had around twenty lines each. It looked like meaty stuff at first glance, an argument or a fight, something for us both to get our teeth into. Seeing it reaffirmed that this was really going to happen caused a brief moment of panic that I wouldn't be up to not just this scene, but the whole story.

I sighed, annoyed with myself. I was being ridiculous, I knew. Okay, so I'm not academically gifted, I'm never going to be an astrophysicist or an Olympic sportswoman or discover a cure for some deadly disease. But one thing I'm sure about is I can act, and I have an unstinting confidence in my abilities as an actress. Of course I could do the story justice. I was only daunted, perhaps, by the prospect of doing a good job on this particular storyline. I wasn't fazed by the storyline itself-why would I be? Unlike Jasmine, I was happy with my s.e.xuality and knew exactly what I wanted from life. I'd had a girlfriend once, you see. It was a while ago when I was at school, studying part-time at the same time as acting, and she had been my first and only girlfriend, but I'd loved her and she'd been The One. At the time, at least.

Grace. That was her name. We were together for around eighteen months, towards the end of my time at school. And we were a proper item, not just experimenting. We were madly in love. We'd pa.s.s by each other in the corridor exchanging knowing looks, linking hands briefly as we walked by. We'd go to one another's homes, telling our parents we were studying in our rooms, but of course studying was the last thing on our minds. It was all very secretive and clandestine because we were both so far back in the closet we'd shut it, locked the door, and thrown the key away. It's how we both wanted it. Her, because she didn't want her parents to find out. Me, because, I don't know...because I figured it was no one else's business. Okay, so a small part of me also didn't want the press to find out and bandy my personal life around in the papers because I was only sixteen and I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it. But the main reason was because Grace and I were special. She was my adorable little secret and I wanted her to stay that way.

Anyway, I needn't have worried about getting found out because, despite us apparently being madly in love with each other, Grace eventually dumped me. So that little problem was soon sorted. She went to Spain for three weeks as part of her Spanish language qualification, staying in a small town just outside Madrid with a local family. And then somehow managed to fall in love with the daughter of the family (yes, within three weeks) and decided to return to Madrid and move into an apartment with her new love the minute her exams were over.

I know. You couldn't make it up, could you?

The one thing I was grateful to her for-and still am-is that she never outed me to anyone. Not to my family, my friends, the press, no one. Her parents found out about her a couple of years later, but to her credit she never told a soul about us. And for that I was always grateful. It could have been so easy for her to go to the papers and do a kiss and tell, but nearly four years on, still no one knows about us.

So Grace was my first and only girl. I never heard from her again after she moved to Madrid, and I've never got over her. Crazy, hey? She left me over two years ago and I still can't move on because she's all I think about, all I want. Knowing I can never have her sometimes near kills me, and I'd do anything-anything-to have her back in my life again right now.

I've flirted with girls in clubs since, and even a few guys as well, but nothing has ever really happened, and certainly nothing has ever matched up to the feelings I had with Grace. I knew I needed to accept the fact she was never coming back and that I had to get on with my life, as hard as that was.

So instead of looking for my next Grace, I concentrated on doing the best job I could in Portobello Road, and I guess it paid off in the long run because now, here I was, holding in my hands probably just about the most exciting-looking script I'd seen in years, on the verge of becoming a major player in one of the soap's biggest-ever stories.

Of course, the fact I liked girls in real life and that the PR people had decided to make Jasmine gay was pure coincidence. But that had to make my job easier, right?

I couldn't wait to get started...

Chapter Two.

I jumped when I heard a voice behind me and jerked my head up, looking far more startled than I should have done. I was in the green room, waiting for "Casey" to arrive so we could do our screen test together. I'd read the script through thoroughly, wanting to do a great job and impress everyone immediately, and now, knowing I'd learnt my lines, I slumped on the sofa, idly surfing the net on my phone and thinking about what to have for dinner later.

"Hey," the newcomer said, lifting her chin in greeting.

"Hey," I replied, putting my phone down.

"So we're reading together later," she said, walking towards me and extending her hand. "I'm Elise."

"Holly." I sprang up from the sofa and shook her hand.

We stood and looked at each other for a moment, each of us a.s.sessing the other in those brief seconds. Elise had an air of superconfidence about her, filling the room with her presence the second she walked in. She was taller than me and, I figured, older than me. Slightly slimmer, too. She was dressed in what looked like designer jeans and a battered leather jacket-the sort you'd pay a fortune for-with an equally battered brown leather messenger bag strung across her shoulders. She had dark blond hair, cropped short against her suntanned face; with her fine bone structure and expressive dark blue, almond-shaped eyes, the haircut worked really well. Better than it ever would have done on me, anyway. It looked a cla.s.sy cut-the kind done at a hideously overinflated price in the centre of London, not just down at your local suburban salon.

"It's been a while since I had a screen test in England," Elise said. I was struck at just how nice her teeth were, too-expensive looking, just like the designer jeans, leather jacket, and haircut. "I'm kind of nervous."

"Oh?" I absent-mindedly reached down for the script, which was on the table next to me.

"Yeah," Elise went on. "I've just come back from LA, you see?"

"I see," I said, figuring that was where the tan was from. "What were you doing there?"

"This and that." Elise smiled, revealing deep dimples in her cheeks. "Interviews, auditions, pilots. Same old."

For some, maybe, I thought, making a mental note to Google her later and find out just exactly what "this and that" really meant.

"Right," I said, nodding. "How long were you there for?"

"About fifteen months or so," Elise replied.

"And now you're back here," I confirmed.

"Yup." She walked past me and sat down on the sofa, in the place where I'd been sitting just before. "Susie'll be here any minute," she said. "Shall we familiarise ourselves with what we're going to be reading before she comes?"

"Sure."

She delved into her bag and pulled out a piece of paper, s.h.i.+fting along slightly as I came to sit on the sofa, too, angling my knees so I was facing her more. "They just gave me this now," she said, waving the piece of paper at me. "Haven't had a chance to look at it yet."

"Me, neither," I lied, not wanting her to know that I'd just spent the last half an hour scrutinizing it to death.

"So you play Jasmine, uh, Jasmine Hunter, yes?" Elise peered down at the papers. "And I'm going to play someone called Casey Fletcher."

She seemed to be talking more to herself than to me, so I stayed quiet.

She traced her finger down the paper, her lips moving silently as she read her lines to herself, occasionally frowning, sometimes smiling.

"Wow, this is heavy stuff!" She looked up and grinned, peering at me through her fringe, which had flopped down over her eyes.

"They did tell you in the audition why your character was being brought in, didn't they?" I asked, puzzled by her reaction to the sample script.

"They told me my character will be a...what was it they called it?" Elise took a pen out of her bag and started underlining parts of her script. "A distraction. That's it. Casey will be a distraction to Jasmine." She looked up at me.