Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe. Fiona Harper

      This time there were no interruptions as he untied the rope and started the motor. He turned the small boat round and set off in the direction of Lower Hadwell, a few minutes’ journey upstream and across the river.

      When he passed the Anchor Stone that rose, proud and unmoving, out of the murky green waters, he risked a look back. She was still standing there on the balcony, her hands wide and her chin tilted up, refusing to acknowledge his existence.

      

      CHAPTER FOUR

       21st May, 1952

       We started filming almost a week ago now, but today was my co-star’s first day on set. Sam Harman might be a very talented director, but he has some very strange methods. Very strange. Up until now he has insisted that Dominic and I rehearse separately. Ridiculous. I mean, instead of building the rapport I should have had with my leading man—in a love story, for goodness’ sake—I’ve been getting acquainted with an assistant producer who reads the lines off a crumpled script like a robot.

      The plot’s a simple one, I suppose. Dashing son of the wealthy family falls for the gardener’s daughter, and she for him, but the snobbery of both families conspires to keep them apart. I’m sure there are a thousand stories like it on library shelves. But what makes this one different is the characters, the chemistry. In the script, it just leaps off the page, and I didn’t understand why Sam had stopped Dominic and me meeting until we shot our very first scene together—coincidentally, Charity and Richard’s first meeting too. (She’s come back from university, aged 22, having always been in love with him, and he suddenly sees her with new eyes.)

       I wish I could write in an American accent, because I’d so love to reproduce Sam’s blunt instructions accurately. I can’t remember his exact words, but I do remember that he told us the scene had to pulse with unspoken longing, with electricity.

       If I’d had more time to think, I probably would have panicked awfully. That was just what I’d been afraid of, having read the script—that I wouldn’t be able to do that ‘instant connection’ thing Sam has been drumming into me since we started rehearsals. I tried to explain this, why it had been such a bad idea keeping Dominic and me apart, but he just kept talking about it being important, about only getting one chance to capture that sweet awkwardness of a first meeting.

       To be honest, I thought he was barking up the wrong tree completely. Or maybe just barking mad. Still, he’s the director and I’m no diva. I need to work. I have to work. It keeps me sane.

       So we all tramped down to the darling boathouse at the bottom of the hill and I went out onto the balcony overlooking the river. (Richard finds Charity there. She isn’t supposed to be there really, but she goes to the boathouse to think, to breathe. It’s her sanctuary.) I suppose Sam is quite clever as a director. He likes his actors being ‘real’, he says.

      Anyway, I didn’t enjoy it much at the time, because he left me standing there, facing away from the door, hands wide on the balcony railing for what felt like an age. By the time Dominic (as Richard) actually did arrive, I’d been waiting so long, all worked up, that I actually did jump when the door crashed open. Didn’t have to act that reaction one bit.

       And then I turned round and saw him.

       ‘Breathless,’ Sam had said to me. ‘That’s all I want from you, Laura. Breathless.’

       And breathless I was.

       I’d seen him before, of course, on a cinema screen like everyone else. I knew he was good-looking, with that sandy thick hair and those startling blue eyes. I always thought it was something about the colouring process that made them look that way, but they really are that blue. And he came striding across the room to confront me … I mean, Charity … and I found I literally had to suck the oxygen into my lungs. I seemed to have forgotten how to do it automatically.

       What was worse was that at first I could tell he was just in character, ready to put a flea in the ear of someone he thought was a trespasser, but the then he reached the door to the balcony and he just … stopped. Stopped dead. I couldn’t tell if he was still acting at first, or if he’d forgotten his lines. I’d certainly forgotten mine.

       And then I realised that he felt it too—the thing I’d hardly realised I’d been feeling myself. It was the strangest thing …

       I knew I wasn’t Charity any more, and he wasn’t Richard. I was me and he was Dominic, and yet something just … fell into place. Instant connection. The only words I have to describe it are Sam’s. How ironic. And it still seems like a poor reflection of what it felt like.

       I knew.

       Knew I loved him. Right from that moment.

       So now I’m not just a sentimental, romantic fool; I’m obviously ready for the nuthouse too. And possibly the divorce courts.

       I also knew that he was married, as I am. But, unlike me, he loves his wife. He’s one of the few film actors who has a good reputation in that department. Another man might act on whatever weird ‘electricity’ of Sam’s passed between us, but I know Dominic won’t. Even if he felt what I felt.

       But now, alone in my hotel room away from Whitehaven, the more I recall the moment, the more I think I was maybe kidding myself. He’s an actor, after all. A very good one. Much better than me.

       He’s probably not worrying about the upcoming scenes, the ones when he’ll have to take me in his arms and kiss me. But I can hardly sleep for thinking about it. I haven’t resorted to marking the calendar with big red crosses yet, but I’m close.

      I can’t wait. But I also know it’ll be just a few, snatched moments of perfection and then they’ll never come again. Which would be worse: to kiss or not to kiss?

       And it might mean nothing at all to him. Like shaking hands with a stranger …

       And, even if it did, it can only mean something for two glorious months, and then only when the cameras are rolling and Sam is barking his orders at us. Maybe that would be worse.

       Come to think of it, Sam was very quiet today. The last couple of days, when I’ve been shooting scenes involving Charity and her parents, he’s been interrupting all the time, making us do things over and over again. But today I hardly heard a squeak out of him. He watched Dominic and me play the scene, his arms folded, and when Dominic had left and I was just staring at the open door, finally able to heave in a breath, Sam just said, very quietly, ‘Cut’.

       One take, that was all, and then he packed up and said he was done for the day. Most unusual.

      

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Louise had been staring so long at the field of sheep on the other side of the river that the little white dots had blurred and melted together. She refused to unlock her gaze until the dark smudge on the river in her peripheral vision motored out of sight.

      Eventually, when it didn’t seem like defeat, she sighed and turned to rest her bottom on the railing of the balcony and stared back into the boathouse.

      He couldn’t have known who he’d looked like standing there below her on the steps as he offered her the long, black key. It had been one of her favourite scenes in A Summer Affair—when Richard came to meet Charity secretly in the boathouse. Not that anything really happened between them. It was the undercurrents,