Free Chasing Charlie by Linda McLaughlan

obviously the first thing on every eight-year-old’s mind. Whatever bright spark had written this script and thought they needed so many kids at this party (couldn’t they tell it with, say, six kids?) had obviously never been a third. And the extras! They weren’t the usual, well-behaved lot from an agency or a drama school or whatever – they were the children and friends of the client. A few of them were plugged into screens of one sort or another but most of them were horsing about and looking at me with an insolent eye, while the mums (with a couple of exceptions) gossiped and flicked through magazines.
    â€˜Come in, Sam, over.’ The radio crackled on my hip.
    â€˜Receiving, over.’ At last, the first! That had to be the call for my extras to stand by for their scene surely. Or, even better, we were wrapping for lunch. I glanced at my watch – one o’clock already, no wonder I was hungry. I watched a heavyset boy get up onto a chair and prepare himself to jump off into an area of floor littered with discarded shoes and toys, most of them with wheels.
    â€˜Stand by for updated schedule. We’re stopping now to discuss, over.’
    â€˜Roger, over.’
    Crap. I shoved my radio back into its holster and reached the boy just before he jumped off, taking him by the arm and guiding him firmly to the ground.
    â€˜Ow, that hurt!’ The boy shook off my hand. I looked at his flaccid face and saw a boy who didn’t get enough exercise or the word no. I sighed noisily – it was either that or scream.
    â€˜I want Dad!’ he demanded, rubbing his arm some more.
    A pretty Asian woman appeared then. ‘Don’t worry, Henry. Daddy’s busy being big man outside right now, you see him soon.’
    Big man? Did she really just say that without any irony at all?
    â€˜But I want him now!’
    â€˜Come on, Henry, come and see what Nanny Chu has for you in her bag, it’s your favourite,’ and she took him out of my reach, thankfully, before I banged their heads together.
    Taking a chance that no one would come looking for me, I quickly popped out of the back door of the house (the extras and I were holed up in the family room slash conservatory at the back of the house, out of the way of the camera at the front) and walked quickly to the corner of the building to peer around. The camera base was under a pop-up gazebo on the driveway at the front of the house, a good thirty yards from where I stood. Even from this distance I could tell that the tension on set had moved up a few notches from edgy (fuelled only by adrenaline) to unpleasant (fuelled by fear). Overhead, the clouds loomed darkly, while on the ground, the director, DOP, first, gaffer, producer and client were huddled together. Ridiculously, the producer still had his ‘client smile’ plastered on his face, although the stress had frozen it into a frightened rictus. He would look so much more convincing if he just frowned. But who would have the balls to tell him that? I watched the gaffer break away to peer at the sky through a gaffer’s glass, looking for the position of the sun behind the clouds. My heart sank. That would indicate they were discussing the next shot, not lunch. My tummy rumbled.
    I turned to go back to the conservatory of hell when a boy shot past me, running straight for the gazebo. It was Henry. I was wrong about the lack of exercise – he could move.
    â€˜Henry! Come back.’ Nanny Chu staggered past me in her heels, her hands pawing the air in front of her, looking a little like she was practising her doggy paddle in what I can only assume was an attempt to make herself go faster. Henry wasn’t listening; he was hell-bent on reaching that gazebo in record time and he was going so fast he looked like he was going to run straight into the meeting without stopping. My hand reached for the radio but wavered, not sure if a message on the radio would serve to