Free The Movie by Louise Bagshawe Page B

forehead. The lank hair was probably making that worse. She washed it every morning, but cheap shampoo was no match for the spitting oil and rank steam of the Mr Chicken kitchen. And she noticed that the real beauty, the red zit on the end of her nose, had triumphed over the six layers of cover-up she’d plastered on it this morning, and was now throbbing dully and noticeably at her in the rearview mior
    Well, Megan thought, if the car breaks down at least I’ll be able to light my way home. And then she was really crying, big, salty tears that spilled out of the corners of her eyes and tickled as they ran down her plump cheeks.
    She slowed down, sniffing and reaching up with one hand to dash the water away. She didn’t want a car wreck. Wouldn’t that be the perfect end to the perfect day?
    It had started off on the wrong foot this morning, not that there was anything new about that. Her alarm shrilling at eight, waking up with a headache, stumbling into the shower to wash it all away. That had been OK: the hot kiss of the water, the soft bubbles of her shower, her fingers slipping between her legs for a little relief, and a shockingly good orgasm five minutes later, leaning back against the thin plastic shower rack, warm rivulets of water flowing across her fingers, mingling with her own juices, letting
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    her come, knowing that her ragged gasps wotfld be hidden from the others by the noise of the shower. Towelling off quickly, she’d almost felt good; relaxed and unstressed, like some soothing hand had temporarily untied all the knots in her muscles. But it hadn’t lasted.
    ‘What’s up?’ she greeted Jeanne and Tina, her roommates, who’d already had breakfast and were sitting at their small table in the cramped kitchenette, drinking instant coffee. The apartment was grimy and too small, the showerhead needed jiggling every other day and the paint was peeling in most of the rooms, but it was also incredibly cheap. And thus in demand. She’d been really lucky to have the other two pick her out of a long list the day she answered the flatshare ad; maybe it was because she was so ‘much plainer than all the other girls who’d applied, and
    they hadn’t wanted any competition. Whatever, neither of them had gone out of their way to make her feel at home once she’d moved her single suitcase in. At least they weren’t overtly hostile. Perhaps that was what passed for friendship in this town. And they hadn’t objected when she’d tried to make the dump seem a little more like home: hanging a surrealist print over the stain in the hallway, putting her faded Afghan blanket down in the kitchen, and tacking her Dark Angel and Metallica posters up in her bedroom and the front room.
    ‘Hi,’ said Jeanne, a French girl with a chic brown bob
    and impeccable skin., Jeanne sold insurance over the phone, downtown, and wanted to be an actress. Central Casting. sometimes called her in to do extra work, and she’d once had a speaking line in a dogfood commercial.
    ‘Post came for you,’ Tina added, not without sympathy.
    Tina was dyed-blonde and silicone-breasted and checked coats at a not-so-exclusive nightclub. She always had more money than her salary would explain, and Megan never asked how she got it.
    Megan had walked forward to the table, her .mouth
     
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    suddenly cottony-dry. No mistaking it. Two fat velopes, addressed to her in her own handwriting, lt, about eighty pages fat. Her script, tLetumed to her again, rejected again. Dismayed, she looked at the franking on tlae top. Sam Kendrick. Oh no. And William Morris.
    She sank into the vacant chair, feeling despair envelop her in its familiar thick fog.
    ‘It isn’t that bad,’ Jeanne said, offering some uncharacteristic sympathy. ‘No one gets accepted right off.’
    ‘You have to know someone,’ Tina confirmed. ‘Do you want some coffee? I’m gonna get some more.’
    Megan didn’t want coffee or anything else unless it was laced with