Christmas at the Little Clock House on the Green: An enchanting and warm-hearted romance full of Christmas cheer. Eve Devon

class.

      Or at an audition.

      Or knocking on her agent, Penny’s, door, calling out ‘Penny’ three times in rapid succession.

      Poor Penny. She must be so over everyone going Sheldon on her.

      Thinking of Penny, she stared hard at her lucky bag crocheted in raspberry, denim and sunshiny yellows that she’d casually tossed at the foot of her yoga mat.

      Just imagining the phone inside ringing with the news had her heart bouncing down to her stomach and getting caught up in the excitement swirling there. It was as if she’d swallowed a giant ball of tangled-up Christmas lights and someone had plugged them in to test out the techno, techno, techno light setting.

      But she’d deal with the reduced-to-jelly nerves all day long because she hadn’t got this wrong.

      Today was the diem and she was going to carpe every last drop out of it.

      She’d nailed the audition and the call-back. The screen-test couldn’t have gone better and all the great feedback she’d received surely meant that finally the hard work, the sacrifice, the rejection, ahem, rejections, were going to be worth it.

      Planets had aligned.

      Unicorns had gathered.

      And after years in La La Land, Emma Danes was finally getting the lead part in the rom-com of her dreams.

      Filming on location in England, here she came.

      She bent her head to hide the proudly joyous grin spreading across her face and decided to attempt the yoga pose after all.

      Halfway through rearranging her body she heard the buzz from her bag and looked up to see it gently vibrating. With a soft yelp, she leaped upon it and uncaring of where she was, fished the phone from out of her bag, and whispered, ‘Penny?’ into it.

      ‘Sugar Bean? Are you sitting down?’ There was a short silence and then, ‘I’ve just heard back and I don’t know what to tell you. I’m so sorry.’

      The earth’s gravitational pull came to a clattering halt.

      That was surely the only reason Emma could possibly be sinking to her yoga mat in a tangle of disbelief. It couldn’t possibly have been Penny’s greeting, her tone, her actual words or Emma’s amazing powers of deduction that was very definitely suggesting…

      Emma squeezed her eyes shut.

       No, no, no.

      She hadn’t got the part?

      Really and truly?

      ‘I know this wasn’t what either of us was expecting to hear,’ Penny said, her usual nasal tone enhanced now that it was laced with sympathy.

      ‘It’s fine,’ Emma whispered, too shocked to process how very much not fine it was as Failure danced onto the stage of her heart and took a flourishing bow.

      ‘I’m just as pissed as you, Pinto Bean. You were perfect for that part.’

      She’d really thought so too.

      Damn it.

      Slowly she looked around her at the rows of exceedingly bendy people all having contorted their bodies into crouching poses with minimum effort.

      She didn’t do minimum effort. She did maximum effort.

      And still came up short, it seemed.

      Bitter disappointment and a strange sense of embarrassment became besties, holding hands as they rushed through her veins, stealing her energy. Stealing her joy.

      She held her bag out in front of her like it was poor Yorick’s skull and stared accusingly down at it. So much for being lucky.

      With her phone still pinned to her ear, she pulled herself upright, shoved her feet into her shoes and then fled the yoga studio with its mirrors shamelessly reflecting her dazed expression for everyone to see.

      Outside, as she made her way back to the sanctuary of her apartment, the bright sunshine, gentle breeze and ridiculously cheerful Christmas music from one of the Prius’ in the endless parade of traffic combined to mock her for daring to assume it had finally been her turn to get the big-break.

      ‘Did they say why?’ Emma asked, picking up her pace, eager to escape the feeling that she was being followed by one of those giant arrows with stupidly over-sized light-bulbs illuminating the words ‘Not Good Enough’.

      ‘Only that someone unexpected expressed interest and after reviewing her tapes, they decided to go with her.’

      ‘Tell me it’s a name, at least.’

      ‘Oh, A-lister, for sure,’ Penny stated in solidarity.

      Emma let herself into the apartment she shared with two other actresses, her smile perilously close to wobbling.

      ‘Take a couple of days then come see me,’ Penny instructed. ‘Keep the faith, okay? There’s always traditional pilot season coming up.’

      Emma supposed it was. If you discounted that it was October and that the month that signalled the start of the season was at the beginning of a whole different year to this one. Tossing her keys onto the sofa, she wandered over to stare at the fridge, aka the shrine where she and her flatmates stuck scribbled notes to each other.

       Em, I got that audition and Jacinta’s on set all day otherwise we’d be here to celebrate with you. Moo Shu Pork and a bottle of cheap bubbles inside. Congrats! Lily xx

      Emma sniffed.

      ‘Lima Bean? Are you crying? There’s no crying in baseball,’ Penny said, channelling her best Tom Hanks.

      Emma opened the fridge and stared at the celebratory feast wondering how many other beans Penny could call her and with her appetite no longer amounting to a hill of them she shut the door and turned around to head into her room.

      ‘I don’t think I can do another pilot season, Pen.’ People probably thought it was easy to play a corpse. It wasn’t like you could get a note that you were too wooden. But do you know how hard it was to lay on concrete, caked in fake blood, staring into the distance unmoving/not breathing while the actress that actually had lines kept pausing to ask what her motivation was?

      It was hard.

      Especially when the actress asking about her motivation was playing a zombie!

      Needless to say that pilot hadn’t been picked up.

      ‘Of course you can do another pilot season, Jelly Bean. This is how we do. You’re an actress. Says so on your ID, right?’

      Ha!

      Nope.

      Actually, it didn’t.

      Under the heading of occupation she tended to go with what paid her regular wages.

      Bartender.

      That’s what she wrote on any form that needed her to state her occupation.

      Said it all, Emma thought, unable to even summon the energy to cry.

      With her spirit whimpering: my moxie, my moxie, my kingdom for my moxie, she shucked her bag off her shoulder, pushed open her bedroom door, pulled back her duvet, and tired beyond all reason, climbed in to bed.

      Muttering a quiet, ‘Bye Penny,’ she hung up and closed her eyes on the day that sucked harder than a sucker fish in charge of sucking clean all the Sea Life aquariums in all the world.

       Chapter 3

       Pity and Pitiful