start shooting, but his list of specifications was insanely specific and his willingness to compromise nil. Not only was Loxley literally perfect as the Grange, but the farm over the hill might just work as their Wuthering Heights too (L-shaped, grey stone, forbidding, isolated). Rainbow couldn’t afford to let Tish say no.
‘Well, we could talk about that,’ she said vaguely. ‘You might not have to move. Did I mention that the movie stars Viorel Hudson? I sure wouldn’t mind sharing a house with him.’ She winked conspiratorially, but if dropping Vio’s name had been intended as an incentive, it failed miserably.
‘Viorel Hudson?’ Tish struggled to place the name. ‘Wasn’t he that Romanian boy, the one that Martha Hudson adopted in the eighties? Is he an actor now, then?’
‘Just a little bit,’ said Rainbow. She tried a different tack. ‘Of course, you’d be well compensated.’
This approach was much more effective.
‘How well?’ said Tish. In her mind she began drawing lines: She wouldn’t do it for less than seventy-five thousand. It wasn’t worth the risk to the building. Or maybe fifty thousand should be the cutoff?
‘I’d have to talk to my client before I could give you a final number,’ said Rainbow. ‘But it would be somewhere in the region of a hundred thousand.’
‘A hundred thousand. Dollars?’
‘Sterling. Per week.’
‘Per week?’ Tish’s voice had suddenly gone up an octave. ‘I see. And how many, er … how many weeks would you, er … would you want the, er …?’
‘A minimum of eight,’ said Rainbow. ‘Possibly twelve. Depends on a bunch of factors – how soon we could start being the main one.’
Tish struggled to conceal her elation. A hundred grand a week, for a minimum of eight weeks! That was almost enough to put them back in the black. She wouldn’t have to sell Home Farm, not this year anyway. Even better, if they started shooting right away, she could be back in Romania by the end of the summer. The thought of returning to Oradea to face Michel and Fleur in person filled her with dread. But the longer she postponed it, the worse she knew it would get. The kids need me, she told herself. I can’t hide out here forever. Curcubeu won’t run itself. For the first time she realized that the girl’s name was Rainbow – the same name as her children’s home. Maybe her coming here was a sign?
Rainbow pulled out her BlackBerry and started making notes. ‘Do you happen to know the name of your neighbours who own that farm over the hill?’
‘Home Farm?’ said Tish.
‘I guess. I only saw one house over there, grey, kinda ugly? If you could convince whoever owns it to let us shoot there too, we’d pay you a commission fee over and above whatever you make on this place.’
‘Actually, Home Farm belongs to the Loxley estate.’
Rainbow beamed. ‘It does?’
Thinking on her feet, Tish added, ‘Yes. But filming there might be a little trickier. It’s a working farm, you see, with sitting tenants. We rely on them to provide a large part of our income –’ about sixty-eight pence last year –‘and the summer months are a very important time. I don’t know if I’d be comfortable, what with all the upheaval—’
‘We’ll double the fee,’ said Rainbow, not batting an eyelid.
Tish suddenly felt faint. Double eight hundred. That was one point six million.
‘Interesting,’ she squeaked. ‘Well, I’ll, er, I’ll certainly think about it. Perhaps you’d better speak to your client. Mr Ramon, was it?’
‘Rasmirez,’ said Rainbow. Was this girl for real?
‘Exactly. Let’s see what Mr Rasmirez says. When you’re in a position to make me a firm offer, we’ll talk again.’
‘We sure will,’ said Rainbow. ‘Is it OK if I take some pictures before I go?’
Mrs Drummond arrived back from Castleton just as Rainbow was leaving. They passed one another on the drive, Rainbow waving excitedly as she sped past, oblivious to the housekeeper’s frosty glare.
‘You got rid of her, then?’ said Mrs Drummond, staggering into the kitchen weighed down with Waitrose bags.
‘Mrs D!’ Relieving her of the groceries, Tish picked her up and twirled her around like an excited child.
‘Good heavens, Letitia. What are you doing?’ she protested. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Not yet,’ said Tish triumphantly. ‘But that’s an excellent idea. Do we have any champagne in the cellar?’
‘Champagne?’ the housekeeper frowned. ‘It’s one o’clock in the afternoon.’
‘I know,’ said Tish. Setting Mrs Drummond on the floor, she suddenly felt terribly emotional. Before she knew it, her eyes were welling up with tears.
‘Darling, whatever’s the matter?’ Mrs Drummond put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Was it that horrid American girl? Did she upset you?’
Tish shook her head. ‘She saved us, Mrs D. She saved Loxley. It’s going to be all right after all.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘I’m not asking for directions again, OK? I am not doing it.’
Chuck MacNamee folded his bulging arms across his broad chest with an air of finality. A fifty-seven-year-old ex-marine, Chuck did not, as he was fond of telling his fellow crew members, ‘take any shit.’ He’d worked in the film business for fifteen years as a driver/set builder/security guard/jack of all trades, ever since he got out of prison (a small matter of a credit fraud and a particularly humourless judge), and Dorian Rasmirez had given him the chance that no one else would, hiring him as a runner on Love and Regrets. Fanatically loyal to Dorian, and generally beloved on set as a good-natured practical joker, even Chuck had his limits.
He’d spent the last four hours trying to drive an articulated lorry through country lanes so narrow they’d have been hard pressed to accommodate an overweight donkey. He’d already stopped twice to ask directions from old men with impenetrable accents, and each time he’d been sent still deeper into the wilds of rural Derbyshire. And, throughout this wild goose chase, he’d been harangued every five minutes by Deborah Raynham, a twenty-two-year-old ‘cameraperson’, Christ preserve us, who kept sighing and mumbling, ‘If you’d only look at the map…’ under her breath.
They had now reached a T-junction in a ridiculously pretty village, tantalizingly called ‘Loxley’. But was there a sign to Loxley Hall? Was there a sign to anywhere? Was there fuck.
‘Fine,’ said Deborah, flinging the crumpled Ordnance Survey map on the floor of the cab in a fit of temper. ‘I’ll ask then. You stay here and sulk like a five-year-old.’
Deborah was not especially pretty in Chuck’s opinion: too short and pale with a snub nose and mousy brown hair that she wore scraped back in a tight bun. But when she got angry there was a certain fieriness to her that seemed to animate her features in a not-unattractive way. Chuck thought how irritated Deborah would be if she knew what he was thinking, and smiled.
‘I’m glad you find this funny,’ Deborah snapped, opening the passenger door and jumping down onto the wet grass of the village green. ‘Let’s hope Mr Rasmirez shares your wacky sense of humour.’
Unlike the rest of the crew, Deborah was not a fan of Chuck MacNamee. He’d sat next to her on the flight from LA, fallen instantly asleep and proceeded to snore like a fat fucking walrus for ten straight hours. No one in that cabin had got a wink of sleep. Then, once they’d arrived in England, red-eyed with exhaustion, Chuck had immediately appointed himself head of operations, ordering the camera crew around like a tyrannical ship’s captain, but always saving his most patronizing