A Step In Time. Kerry Barrett

name’s not even Amy Lavender. It’s Amy Brown.’

      ‘Nooooo,’ said the first one.

      Sitting on the loo, I rolled my eyes. That was hardly a state secret. My real name was, in fact, Amy Lavender Brown, so I’d simply dropped the boring Brown when I started acting. It had been my mum’s idea, actually – in fact, it was the reason behind my unusual middle name. She’d hoped I’d be a star one day, even before I could talk. Pressure, much?

      ‘I feel a bit sorry for her, you know?’ one girl said. ‘Everyone knew her fella was cheating on her, for months and months before she found out.’

      Oh, really? I thought. People were always so wise after the event.

      ‘True,’ the other one said. ‘He slept with Casey. And he was all over Felicity at that album party.’

      My mind raced. What album party? Not the one Matty went to when I’d been doing that week of night shoots? Surely not …

      ‘He tried it on with me once,’ the first one said. ‘He was quite persistent. I had to get Greg to have a word with him in the end.’

      ‘What a sleaze,’ said the other girl. Then she giggled. ‘You had a lucky escape, though. That Amy Lavender could have whacked you instead.’

      Laughing, they both left the toilets and I heard the double doors back into the bar bang shut.

      I sat there for a while, trying to process what I’d heard. Matty had cheated on me before? It just didn’t make sense. I had to speak to him, to find out if it was true. I pulled my phone out of my bag and scrolled to his number, then paused. No, I was giving too much weight to silly gossip. It wasn’t true.

      Feeling more settled, I flushed the loo, washed my hands and made for the stairs. Then I changed my mind and headed to the bar instead. I needed something to calm my nerves.

      ‘Champagne, please,’ I said to the barmaid, all my intentions of staying teetotal abandoned. ‘Quick as you like.’

       Chapter 8

      ‘Celebrating?’ said the man next to me at the bar. He was sitting on a bar stool, slumped over his own glass of bubbles.

      I downed my glass in one mouthful and turned to look at him.

      ‘Well, I just found out my ex-boyfriend was actually cheating on me for a lot longer than I thought, with more women than I thought, and that just about everyone else in London knew about it and was laughing at me behind my back. Do you think that sounds like a reason to celebrate?’

      The man laughed.

      ‘Sure it does,’ he said. He had a soft American drawl that I liked. ‘Sit down.’

      I perched on a stool next to him and he topped up my glass and then his own.

      ‘What are you celebrating?’ I asked. He didn’t look particularly joyful, gazing into the bottom of his champagne flute like the answers to all the world’s problems were there.

      ‘Oh, nothing much,’ he said. ‘I got offered the job of my dreams this afternoon.’

      ‘Well, that’s good,’ I said, encouragingly.

      ‘Yeah, it is,’ he said. ‘But when I called home to tell my parents, my dad wasn’t interested because I’m not in his line of work.’

      ‘What’s that?’ I said, draining my glass again.

      ‘He sells cars,’ the man said. He ran his fingers through his blond hair. ‘And my mom was more interested in telling me my high-school girlfriend just got married.’

      ‘Do you care that she got married?’ I asked.

      ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Not really. I’ve not seen her for years. But then I came here to support my flatmate – he’s the lead. And he’s abandoned me to go off with some girl.’

      He looked into his glass again.

      ‘I just felt a bit lonely.’

      I grinned at him.

      ‘It sucks, doesn’t it?’

      He nodded.

      ‘So why don’t we get drunk and drown those sorrows?

      He smiled back at me, showing straight white teeth in what was, I now realized, rather a handsome face.

      See, I told Philip in my head, I am moving on.

      While my companion ordered another bottle from the barmaid, I studied him. He was about as different from Matty as it was possible to be. Matty was swarthy with finely styled dark hair and – at the moment, at least – a beard. This guy was clean-cut with messy blond hair and a sprinkling of freckles across his nose. He looked like an overgrown and – I cast a sneaky glance at his arms – very buff teenage surfer.

      ‘Do you surf?’ I asked him suddenly.

      He smiled wistfully.

      ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I grew up in California. Everyone surfs.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Nah, not really. But I do. I miss it when I’m here.’

      ‘You should go to Cornwall,’ I said. ‘There’s brilliant surfing down there. I used to go on holiday there with my best friend’s family when we were kids. Maybe I’ll take you one day.’

      ‘I’d like that.’

      Our eyes met for a fraction of a second too long, and I felt slight butterflies in my stomach. Moving on could be fun, I thought.

      It didn’t seem nearly as much fun when I woke up the next day.

      My head was banging, and there was sun pouring through the window, which seemed to be in the wrong place.

      Cautiously, and without lifting my painful skull, I opened one eye. Yes, that window definitely hadn’t been there yesterday. I opened the other eye. Man, that sunshine was bright – it had to be late morning, possibly even lunchtime. I felt on the bedside table for my phone to check the time – but the table wasn’t there. Hold on. What was happening? I sat up, trying to ignore the hammering in my head and looked round me.

      I was in a smallish attic room, with a fitted wardrobe and white walls. It had one large window – the one the sun was streaming through – and two smaller ones on the opposite wall. My Gatsby dress was draped over a chair but I couldn’t see my underwear. I had a quick check under the duvet. Nope. No undies there. I squinted in the sunshine and saw my knickers poking out from under the bed. Next to me, snoring loudly, was the blond surfer.

      ‘Shit,’ I whispered. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ This was not staying under the radar. I was so desperate to get off the endless treadmill of courting the showbiz media one minute, then having to avoid the inevitable press interest when things went wrong – and this was not the way to go about it. I tried to remember leaving the party and if there were any photographers there. I couldn’t recall being papped, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Judging by the horrendous hangover I was developing, there were bound to be bits of the evening I didn’t remember exactly.

      I did remember telling Surfer Dude how Matty had cheated on me over and over and I’d lost the upper hand by whacking poor Kayleigh. I also recalled him telling me that Matty was an idiot and that he didn’t deserve someone as nice as me. Which I’d thought was just the most lovely thing anyone had ever said to me, so I’d rewarded him with a kiss. And then another one. And we’d carried on kissing all the way to Surfer Dude’s flat. Which must be near the theatre because we’d definitely walked there, but I had no idea where I was exactly.

      And then we’d kissed all the way to his bedroom. And it had been really very nice. My head may have been banging but I had no trouble remembering that part of the evening. Carefully,