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  I looked at my mum, who smiled at me and nodded, and then at my dad, who pumped his fist in the air in a way that would have ordinarily mortified me if I hadn’t been so nervous, and then finally at Sylvia Lighthouse, who was standing straight-backed against the window.

  “Remember everything I’ve taught you and you will excel,” she told me with quiet dignity.

  “I will, Ms Lighthouse,” I said solemnly, though to be perfectly honest at that point I couldn’t remember a single word she had ever said about anything ever. I could hardly even remember my name.

  “We are working to a schedule here, you know,” Lisa Wells said, rolling her eyes. I stood up and I followed her into the second suite.

  Mr Dubrovnik was sitting on a fat, cream sort of half-sofa half-chair, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees as if at any moment he might want to suddenly get up and leave. He watched me as I walked in through the door and pointed at the chair opposite him.

  “Hello, Ruby,” he said. His voice was soft and low and quite friendly really.

  “Hello,” I said. My voice was high and squeaky and sounded quite a lot like a strangulated mouse.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you again,” Mr Dubrovnik said. “I bet you didn’t think you’d be asked back, did you?” I shook my head. It seemed like a better alternative than squeaky-voiced talking. Mr Dubrovnik smiled. He had a very nice fatherly sort of smile that wrinkled his face up around his eyes and made him look about a hundred times less scary.

  “And so, Ruby, why do you think I’ve asked you to come to this second audition today?” he asked. I thought about it for a moment and realised that this time I’d have to speak, so I concentrated on making my voice come out as normal as possible.

  “Well,” I said, and this time I still sounded like a mouse but not one who had been breathing the helium from party balloons, “I thought you might have got me mixed up with another Ruby.” It was a terrible answer, but the only one I had, and I was rewarded with another one of Mr Dubrovnik’s friendly smiles. He laughed and shook his head.

  “So you thought you did pretty badly, right?” he said, twinkling at me. I found myself smiling back at him as I nodded.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “You did. You were terrible. You let the situation rule you, and an actor can never, never allow that to happen. You have to rule the situation at all times. No matter how difficult it is. You have to own it. You’ll learn that if you ever work in live theatre.” I nodded.

  “I have done live theatre,” I said quickly. “School plays.” Mr Dubrovnik laughed again and this time so did I. I had no idea that I was so hilarious. His face settled into a smile again and he leaned even further forward in his chair as if he were about to tell me a secret.

  “I’ll tell you why you’re here, Ruby, and I won’t lie,” he told me. “You’ve got something none of the other girls going for this part have got.” I held my breath, hoping he was about to say something like “real talent”, but instead he said, “You’ve got history and years of experience. I’ve seen the show you were in, Kensington Lofts, or whatever.” I nodded. “I asked Sylvia to send me over some tapes after your first audition because I couldn’t believe that the performance you gave was really your best.” I shook my head with emphasis. “Thought not, so I watched about four episodes and—you were really good in it. Really good considering those scripts.” He smiled again; it was a smile that seemed to reach right up to his forehead. “Also, you might like to know that Miss Grant liked your audition. She said she thought you had something about you that might be right for the part.” I thought how nice that this Miss Grant, whoever she might be, liked me, and then I realised who he was talking about! Not just a Miss Grant, but the Miss Grant—Imogene Grant!

  “Imogene Grant thought that from seeing the tape of my audition?” I said, sounding incredulous. “Did she see that last bit?” I asked him, mortified. He smiled.

  “Afraid so,” he said. I clapped my hands over my eyes and he laughed again.

  “Yeah, I know,” Art Dubrovnik said. “But even with the last bit, she wanted me to see you again and I’m not in the habit of saying no to my leading lady. So are you all set?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “As I’ll ever be,” I said.

  Mr Dubrovnik nodded.

  “Jeremy!” he called out to another room most politely. “Would you mind coming through now, please?” And my jaw dropped as Britain’s leading thespian and one of the world’s top film actors walked into the room. It was Jeremy Fort.

  “Hello,” he said to me, giving me a little bow.

  “My mum so loves you,” I said to him without thinking, and then they were both laughing. I felt myself flush red to the roots of my hair, which may have been a blessing in disguise because at least then they couldn’t see the blotches I was coming out in.

  “I can see you know who Jeremy is,” Art Dubrovnik said. “He will be playing Polly’s ‘father’—the evil scientist who kidnaps her.” He handed me a script bound in a dark blue cover. “Here’s a short scene for you to learn. I want you to spend a few minutes learning your lines with Jeremy and then I’ll come back into the room and you give me your best shot, OK?”

  I couldn’t speak; I was too busy praying my breakfast wouldn’t want to make another cameo appearance.

  “Ruby,” Mr Dubrovnik said, gently but firmly, his smile settling in the bottom half of his face only. “If you want to act, you can’t be star-struck. You have to act like you’re just as important as anyone else in this room; you have to own this room, OK?” I nodded, and tried not to think about the fact that I barely had enough pocket money to own a box of complimentary matches, let alone anything else in this room.

  “OK, I’ll try,” I managed to say, and then as I looked at Mr Dubrovnik’s encouraging smile spreading back past his eyebrows, I remembered what I had forgotten the first time. That this was my chance, my one chance to get it right and to at least do the best I could do, so that this afternoon and tomorrow and next week I wouldn’t be kicking myself, wishing again and again that I’d done things differently. This was my moment. I had to give it everything I could.

  “I’ll give it my best shot, Mr Dubrovnik,” I said, my voice sounding clear and even again. Mr Dubrovnik looked pleased.

  “I look forward to it,” he said.

  When he had left the room Jeremy Fort looked at me and said, “Now then, Ruby, shall we begin?”

  THE LOST TREASURE OF

  KING ARTHUR©

  A WIDE OPEN UNIVERSE

  PRODUCTION

  DIRECTED BY ART DUBROVNIK

  WRITTEN BY ART DUBROVNIK AND

  ADRIENNE SCOTT

  STARRING: IMOGENE GRANT, HARRY

  MCLEAN AND SEAN RIVERS

  INT. DAYTIME—PROFESSOR DARKLY’S

  OFFICE AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

  The office is lined with shelves of very old-looking books. There is a huge ancient-looking round table covered in scrolls and manuscripts. There is a mummified head on the table. It looks like it died in terrible agony. PROFESSOR DARKLY HARRIS stands with his back to camera, looking out of the window. POLLY HARRIS runs into the room to tell him what CATCHER SMITH has just told her. She is anxious and out of breath.

  POLLY

  Daddy! Daddy! Oh, thank goodness, there you are. You have to come quickly. There’s this American boy downstairs saying terrible things about you, Daddy! Terrible lies. He must be quite mad!

  Professor Darkly turns around slowly and smiles at his “daughter”. It’s the dark, deadly smile of a monster who is preparing to finish off his prey.

  PROFESSOR DARKLY

  Now, now, Polly dear. Do calm down. I’m sure it’s just another tourist playing some kind of joke. You know what these Americans are like. They have no appreciation of any real history. Just sit down and tell me calmly what he said to you.

  POLLY sits reluctantly at the table on the only free chair. She looks unhappily at the mummified head. It s
eems to be staring right at her.

  POLLY

  Well, this one knew a lot about Arthurian legend, Daddy. He said…he said that—that you weren’t my father at all! That you had kidnapped me because I was a child born on the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month, which made me perfect for your evil purposes. He said that you were an evil scientist and worse still the direct descendant of the evil sorcerer Mordred. And that you were planning to resurrect the sleeping body of King Arthur and enslave him with a powerful spell, so that he would show you where the sword Excalibur was hidden, thus giving you the power to conquer the world and bring about an apocalypse!

  PROFESSOR DARKLY laughs. It is a dark and menacing laugh, one that POLLY has never heard before from her beloved and kindly father. She starts to feel afraid of him but is still disbelieving. Professor Darkly leans menacingly over the table.

  PROFESSOR DARKLY

  And was there anybody else with this boy, my dear?

  POLLY leans back in her chair.

  POLLY

  He said…he said he had come with my sister. My real sister who had been looking for me since the day you took me. He said her name was Flame Buchanen.

  PROFESSOR DARKLY howls in rage and sweeps the papers off the round table. The mummified head falls into POLLY’S lap. She jumps up and screams.

  PROFESSOR DARKLY

  That cursed woman will ruin everything!

  Polly creeps gradually further away from her father back towards the open door. She is very afraid and confused.

  POLLY

  Daddy? What do you mean it will ruin everything? What do you mean?

  PROFESSOR DARKLY narrows his eyes and looks at his retreating daughter. Slowly, slowly he begins to stalk towards her, a terrible smile on his face.

  PROFESSOR DARKLY

  My dear, I had hoped to keep all this from you until the last moment. But I suppose it is almost the last moment. Everything that boy told you is true. I have raised you and pretended to love you. But our entire life has been a lie—a lie waiting for this day, this very night! For tonight is the night when the ancient prophecy shall come true at last and King Arthur will walk this earth again, but not as a hero to save the world from destruction. Oh, no, he will be my slave. And to make him my slave I need to make a sacrifice to my forefather Mordred. A human sacrifice, my dear. A child born on the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month. A girl descended from Guinevere herself. I think you’ll find that’s you!

  In tears of disbelief and fear POLLY runs towards the open door, but PROFESSOR DARKLY gets there first and slams it shut in her face.

  Chapter Six

  As we waited for Anne-Marie to come back from the audition suite, I went over and over the last half an hour again and again, just like I had with the first audition.

  After about five minutes I had forgotten that Jeremy Fort was Jeremy Fort, and started to think of him as my fellow actor, just in the same way I would have thought of Nydia in the school play or Brett on the show. As we looked at the short but emotional scene, I started to feel just as I used to at work: I felt like I knew what I was doing.

  I was wrong though—at least partly.

  Jeremy told me that the first read-through of a scene should be to get the rhythm of the words, so as we read our lines to each other I tried my best to do what he said. But he stopped me and reminded me.

  “Listen for the rhythm, Ruby; don’t turn it into a musical!” I looked at him. I had no time to bluff my way through.

  “I don’t think I understand you,” I said, intently wanting to be able to. Jeremy thought for a moment.

  “Ruby,” he said eventually. “If you want a career as an actor, you have to be the best of the best. You have to remember that whatever job you are doing, from a toothpaste commercial to a blockbuster movie, you have to treat it as if it were the role of a lifetime—a work of genius that the bard could have written himself. Remember that without your script you are literally nothing. Pay it respect and don’t just read it—listen to it. Listening to the rhythm of the lines and—even more crucially—to your fellow actors is the single most important skill you will ever learn as an actor. Because whether you and I have read this scene once or a thousand times, when our audience sees it, it must be absolutely fresh and spontaneous. Every single time you hear me say my lines to you, you have to listen to them as if it’s for the very first time.” Jeremy gave me a small tight smile. “If you can do that—you can do anything.”

  And when he said that, it was as if I suddenly understood a really long and really difficult maths equation that I had been staring and staring at for hours and hours and was unable to make sense of. It was as if at last I understood this great big secret that everyone else had been in on except for me. In the space of five minutes, Jeremy Fort had given me knowledge that would make me a better actor no matter how this audition turned out. And that all by itself nearly made it worth coming here today, whatever the result.

  But only nearly, because suddenly—knowing the kind of actors that I would be working with and learning from—I wanted the part even more badly.

  “Wow,” I said, which wasn’t quite the wise and scholarly response I had been aiming for but it was all that came out.

  “Good,” Jeremy said, his smile warming as he looked at his watch. “Right—well, we have twenty minutes left, so let’s read again.”

  The second time he told me I was being too large. I took offence initially and said that I was only thirteen and that it wasn’t actually healthy to diet at my age. When he pointed out that he was not referring to my size but my acting, I was only a bit less offended.

  “Large?” I asked him.

  He nodded.

  “Yes—look, you’ve done TV work, haven’t you?” I nodded. “Well, imagine your face on a screen that’s a thousand times bigger than a TV screen. Every tiny little twitch, every tiny little hair magnified to giant proportions.” I thought of the spot that Mum and I had spent several minutes trying to cover up this morning.

  “Ew,” I said.

  “Exactly—well the same goes for your acting. In film you don’t need to act large. Keep it small, but precise.” He looked at his watch again. “Well, Ruby, our time is up, I’m afraid.” I felt a wave of panic well up in my chest.

  “But—I haven’t done it small yet! Can’t we do it quickly being small like you said?” I pleaded, my voice high and stupid again. “I’m too large!”

  Jeremy smiled.

  “Just remember everything we’ve talked about and—if you can—I promise you that you will do splendidly. Come on, we have to read for Art and Lisa now.”

  There was something about the way he said Lisa’s name that made my stomach contract, because I knew that Lisa didn’t like me.

  “Are assistant directors’ opinions very important?” I asked him in a very small voice. Jeremy gave me a sympathetic look and squeezed my shoulder as we walked to where Art and Lisa would be waiting.

  “Let’s just say that this one’s is,” he said.

  Something had happened when Jeremy and I acted the scene for Mr Dubrovnik and Lisa Wells, something that had never happened to me before.

  For those ten minutes I forgot myself entirely. I forgot I was acting, forgot that I was reading lines, because for those few minutes I was Polly Harris, just discovering the truth about the father she loved. On the brink of understanding that in fact he was an evil historian who had kidnapped her at birth and was planning to sacrifice her at the precise moment the nine planets aligned, in an insane bid to bring about the end of the world. I felt Polly’s pain and confusion, her shock and fear, all mixed up with the feelings I had and could still remember from the night that Dad left us. Polly’s feelings and my feelings ran together likes two colours of paint mixing until we were one new shade and until I believed in her, I really believed in her. And whatever happened, I knew I had done my very best; I knew I could be proud of myself.

  There had been a few moments’
silence as Jeremy and I had finished the scene and I saw Art Dubrovnik and Lisa Wells exchange looks.

  “Well, thank you, Ruby,” Mr Dubrovnik said. “As you probably know our schedule for casting the part of Polly is very tight. We start filming really soon, so we’ll make a decision by the end of the day.”

  I nodded, feeling a little dreamy as the hotel suite came back into focus around me. I was still half in Polly’s world.

  “OK,” I managed to say. I looked at Jeremy. “Thank you for today,” I said. “It was amazing to have the chance to meet you and learn from you. Maybe if one day you didn’t have anything on you could come and do a masterclass at the academy. I’m sure Ms Lighthouse would love it. We’ve had a few famous actors—we had Brett Summers last year, who used to play my mum in Kensington Heights, although that was before the rehab. But I bet you’d be much better than her, all she talked about was herself and her new revised biography.”

  Jeremy smiled and shook my hand.

  “Well, if I happen to find myself one day with ‘nothing on’, I’ll pop by,” he said. “And well done—you really listened.”

  That was an hour ago. I looked at my watch. Anne-Marie had been in there for nearly fifteen minutes longer than I had. They had been so strict about time in my audition, why were they letting hers run over the allocated slot? Perhaps they loved her so much they had offered her the part on the spot and were talking contracts.

  I thought about how I would feel if Anne-Marie came out of there with the part already hers. I rehearsed it like Oscar nominees practise their loser’s face just as much as they practise their acceptance speeches. Gracious, happy and excited for her. Dignified. No, not bothered. That’s how I would be or at least that’s how I would act.