The Disappearing Act(51)

“Oh right! Thank you so much. Should I maybe come down?” I answer, trying not to betray the huge relief I feel at the fact that Lucy refused to let a stranger up to my apartment.

“No, it’s fine, I can bring it up. I just wanted to check you were okay to be disturbed this late.”

“Yeah, that would be fantastic, thanks, Lucy. Oh, and there’s something up with my security monitor. It’s not working.”

“Oh. Okay, I’ll take a look at it when I come up.”

Revised pages for Monday? I hang up and dash back into the living room to check my emails but there’s nothing about new scenes from either Universal or from my agents, which is odd. Nobody thought to tell me I’d have entirely new scenes to learn for Monday.

The package Lucy delivers is exactly what she described, another large packet similar to the first stamped with the studio logo. Once she hands it over I direct her to the broken monitor and its lifeless screen. She carefully removes the casing around the unit, revealing the circuitry beneath.

“Hmm, I thought it could be something simple like a dead battery,” she says, her forehead creased in concentration, “but it looks like these are hooked up to the mains.” She shrugs and carefully replaces the casing. “That’s annoying, but nothing to worry about. I can get someone from maintenance to take a look on Monday, if that works? I usually call up to check if someone arrives for you, anyway.”

“That would be fantastic,” I reply, my tone breezy, even though the thought of having no security monitor until Monday is deeply unsettling given what I now have sitting open on my coffee table. At least I can be assured Lucy is downstairs preventing anyone from randomly wandering up here in the night. And then there’s the security cameras along the hall. I can only pray that they’d be enough to put whoever hired Joanne off paying me a visit. I try not to think about the extreme coincidence of my camera going out after the very peculiar day I’ve had.

As soon as Lucy leaves, I double-lock the door behind her and carry my new script into the kitchen. Inside I find a note from Kathryn’s assistant, mentioning having already emailed me the scene numbers for Monday and the new pages, but now sending everything in hardcopy, too, just in case it’s easier for me that way.

I never received that email.

Kathryn’s assistant also includes a schedule in the package for the day of the screen test, which I have also never seen. For the first time, I find out that the call time for Monday is ten a.m. for hair and makeup, to start filming at noon. If I hadn’t just received this package I would have had no idea what scenes to prepare or when to arrive on Monday morning.

I’ve been deluding myself up until now; it’s not a coincidence that my most important emails are somehow not getting to me. I think of Cynthia’s unusually urgent confirmation email and wonder if perhaps it wasn’t her first attempt at getting through to me.

Without a thought I get up, walk straight out to my apartment hallway, and depress the door handle. It’s locked, as it should be. I shake my head at the thought but for a second there it seemed entirely possible that the apartment door lock as well as the security monitor might have been deliberately tampered with.

But nobody would be able to get into the apartment while I was out; they wouldn’t even let a courier upstairs just now. I must be having a problem with my server? Or could someone be accessing my email remotely?—but all my emails come direct to my mail app. I’m obviously no computer expert but other than a run-of-the-mill server problem, I can’t think of another rational reason I haven’t been getting emails.

Then it hits me. My computer isn’t necessarily the issue here; you can access emails via your phone too. I head back into the kitchen where it sits innocently on the countertop and try to remember if I left it unattended at any point today around Joanne. But my phone is password-protected, there’s no way she’d be able to open it even if she wanted to. Could it be that in the general chaos I somehow accidentally deleted my own emails? Not such a crazy thought given that I am apparently the only person other than cleaning staff who can get into this apartment. Am I getting so distracted I’m making these stupid mistakes or am I missing something? Either way I might have almost lost the most important job of my life.

I shake off all thoughts of Joanne, Emily, and emails and pull out the new script pages to take a look. It takes a moment to refocus before my work-brain kicks in. Thankfully the scenes they want me to do are the ones I half expected, and the dialogue has changed only slightly from the previous draft of the script.

There are three scenes to learn, and I have only one full day to prepare. It should be enough if I focus but I’ll need to get my head straight and back in the game.

I look at the oven clock. It’s too late to start learning lines tonight. Besides, I need to work out what the hell I’m going to say to the police tomorrow about the whole Joanne/Emily situation. I wonder for a second if I can delay going into the station—after all, this audition on Monday could change my life. But then I don’t think I could live with the idea of Emily not getting the help she might need. Besides, if I report it early tomorrow, I can put it to bed once and for all and have the rest of the day to focus on the script. Which gives me tonight to find out as much as I can about Emily’s disappearance.

My eyes stray back to the open laptop on the coffee table as I feel myself being dragged back into Emily’s life.