Free 50 Ways to Find a Lover by Lucy-Anne Holmes

when Selina Gutteridge, my favourite casting director, pops her head round the door and says, ‘Sarah, you’re in next, sorry about the wait.’
    ‘Oh, not to worry,’ I say, smiling and getting up. But she’s not looking at me, she’s glaring at Rachel Bird. These are good evils. They make my own Goneril stare-of-disdain look as though Geoffrey is mildly disgruntled with Bungle. Unsurprisingly, Rachel Bird looks terrified. Selina Gutteridge walks purposefully over to Rachel Bird and stands over her. Rachel Bird attempts to speak but is silenced by a loud slap administered to her cheek. I gasp. I have never seen a proper slap. I must remember it in case I need to do any slapping in plays. Rachel Bird clutches her cheek and slowly puts her iPod and BlackBerry in her bag and starts to shuffle out of the room.
    ‘Um, bye, Rachel, I’ll um, have a look at your blog,’ I mumble. Suddenly Selina spins around and glares at me. I make a yelping sound, thinking that she’s going to slap me.
    ‘I wouldn’t bother. It’s disgusting. Torrid tales of sleeping with other people’s boyfriends.’ She spits the words out as though she’s got a hair stuck down her throat.
    ‘Oh,’ I whimper, fearing what acts of passion Selina will do next, but she just goes limp. Her shoulders slump and her head drops and I expect her to start crying.
    ‘Are you OK?’ I ask softly.
    She looks at the floor and shakes her head. Then she takes a deep breath and starts to compose herself. She raises her head slowly. I wait for her to say something sadly profound. She doesn’t.
    ‘What the hell happened to your head, Sarah?’
    ‘Oh, I head-butted some shelves,’ I reply. My head is really sore. I touch it lightly and feel fresh blood on my fingers.
    ‘Hang on, there’s something in there,’ she says, holding me still and squinting into my cut. ‘Here, let me get it. It’s a small piece of plastic.’
    She finds a tissue in her bag. And I stand there in agony as Selina Gutteridge extricates a small piece of Rachel Bird’s BlackBerry from the gaping wound in my head. This definitely has never been mentioned in any audition technique books I have read.
    ‘Oh well, Sarah, it looks like you’ve got the part,’ she says, smiling. ‘Your competition has left the building. You may as well go home.’

 
ten
     
    ‘Shall we read a bit more of your friend’s filthy blog?’ asks Julia, excitedly dunking a croissant in her cappuccino.
    ‘OK,’ I say through a mouthful of Marmite on toast.
    ‘It’s fucking brilliant!’
    ‘Julia!’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Stop swearing. There are children present.’
    ‘You’re a bit grumpy today, Sare.’
    ‘I’m not!’
    ‘Yes you are. It’s because I didn’t read your bloody blog, isn’t it?’
    ‘No!’
    ‘It is. I know it is. Sarah, I speak to you every day, therefore I know what’s going on in your life. Why do I need to read about it as well?’
    ‘Well, you don’t actually need to read it, just click on it a lot, when you’ve got nothing to do, then I’ll have lots of hits on my site meter. I’ve only had forty-two.’
    ‘Sarah! You’re fucking warped!’
    ‘Julia!’
    ‘Come on, let’s read this bit about masturbation.’
    ‘Julia!’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Well, you keep saying “fuck” and now you’ve said “masturbation” and we’re in a café full of children.’
    ‘Where is it? Ah, here we go: “I like to masturbate any time, any place, anywhere,”’ she reads. Deliberately loudly.
    Convent girls have a reputation for being rampant. Rachel Bird’s blog, Confessions of a Convent Girl , is doing absolutely nothing to dispel this. It is so juicy I used up the whole of my ink cartridge printing most of it to show Julia today. We have already read the bit where she discusses the soft lesbian porn film she made in Amsterdam, and the in-depth account of her breast-augmentation operation, paid for by a sixty-five-year-old Arab. I am not sure which of her many partners was