Belinda Missen - One Week ’Til Christmas

Screaming girl theory? Urgh, because girls can’t just have free thought. I tossed my head back and shook a fist. ‘Yes, but you also have terrible taste.’

‘Only in women and booze,’ he quipped, the tell-tale sizzle of a burning cigarette filling the dead air. ‘Anyway, I really think it’ll be a boon for website traffic. What do you say? Ready to be swept off your feet?’

Despite my requests for experience, I don’t think Edwin realised it had been a good six months since I’d sat down to binge-watch anything except the inside of my eyelids, let alone consider anything in the entertainment industry.

My days were either spent in an office that still had dusty Easter decorations fluttering from the air-conditioner, or on the lowest of low-cost airlines to visit some new health retreat for an exclusive article. Nights were spent at the latest bar openings in Melbourne, racing home to write an article before I turned into a pumpkin. Television was a distraction I simply couldn’t afford. Between that and trying to maintain relationships with equally busy friends, I hadn’t had a lot of time to dip my toes into the world of celebrity.

‘What do you want me to put together?’ I asked. ‘A fluff piece? A five-minutes-with type article? A few hundred words on the rise of this magic star? Or something more in-depth?’

‘I’ll leave that up to you,’ he said. ‘But let’s not get too deep and meaningful. Just something to bring in the clicks.’

Quelle surprise . It was so like him to just drop something on my lap with zero structure and expect me to pick it up and run with it. I looked longingly at the handwritten list Estelle had prepared of Christmas experiences I should have while I was in town. Did London have a 34th Street? At this rate, I’d be heading down there to try and conjure up a miracle just to get through half of it.

‘Have you got anything at all you can send through? A bit of a cheat sheet?’ I asked. ‘Some more details? Any questions you specifically want to focus on?’

‘You get yourself into a cab. I need you at the National Theatre by 1 p.m. I’ll shoot you through the details,’ he said, excited to finally have me over the line. ‘Oh, and make sure you take your camera equipment. I need some of those award-winning shots you’re so famous for.’

Cab? I huffed so hard my fringe blew into the next postcode. If I had to be in the seat by one, I had just over thirty minutes to get myself to the Southbank. Anyone with half a Google Map and a set of eyes could tell you a cab wouldn’t cut it in the middle of London. Not today. Not ever.

As for award-winning photos? While travel allowed me to indulge in my mistress of photography, if ever I’d won a prize for it, nobody had told me.

‘All right, okay,’ I said, as if I had absolutely any choice in the matter. ‘You do realise that I’m supposed to be on leave, don’t you?’

‘Just know that I adore your commitment to the Melbourne Explorer ,’ he said.

‘You owe me an extra day. Or, you know, actual money so I can pay my bills,’ I said.

‘I’ll even buy you a slice of your favourite cake when you get back.’

If that were true, he’d be buying me mango and macadamia cheesecake and not one of Coles Finest chocolate mud cakes every time he ‘nipped out’ to the shops near the office, but beggars can’t be choosers, and cake was cake.

I unplugged my phone, threw my backpack over my shoulder and raced down the stairs. ‘I’ll have it through in, say, twenty-four hours?’

‘There’s that Christmas spirit. Thanks Iz, you’re a keeper, you are!’

Yes, I bloody well was.

I hadn’t even left home and I was already running late. I didn’t check to see if I had everything I needed before I stole Estelle’s leather jacket and made my way to the Tube at Sloane Square. By the time I made it to the street corner, snow was falling, and the neighbours were arguing as they tried to pull a fir tree through their front door. Fronds and needles littered the footpath but, boy, did it smell great.

And that was about as Christmassy as I was likely to get today.

I hadn’t been to the theatre since a compulsory high school trip where we were told Macbeth would hold the answers to life, or at least our English essay due later that week. Immediately afterwards, we were spat out into local parkland to eat squashed sandwiches for lunch that were picked off by seagulls the size of chihuahuas. To add insult to injury, I failed my essay. Was it any wonder I’d sworn off theatre since?

As I hurried along the Southbank, I grew not so silently jealous of the winter market, which was bustling with all things yuletide. I could almost taste the freshly baked, sugar-dusted mince pies that still bore the bite of whiskey, not to mention the orange and berry scent of mulled wine. Hell, I’d give anything for something as simple as a hot chocolate with a few marshmallows right now.

It held much more promise than the National Theatre, which was an imposing grey beacon over the Thames. Even the sky was a brighter shade of mid-winter white, the sun hidden somewhere behind it all. I wrinkled my nose, curled my lip. Bloody Edwin.

It was just my luck that he hadn’t emailed me yet. I considered turning around and going home, bodging up a piece full of pull quotes from old articles and stock images, except I couldn’t remember the actor’s name in a fit. Also, the guilt would kill me quicker than two-day-old takeaway, so Edwin had that on his side.

So, here I was, going in blind.

Smile plastered on, press pass in hand, I made myself known to the burly security guard by the door. With his head gleaming under fluorescent lights and polo shirt pulled tight around his biceps, he looked like a charity store Dwayne Johnson.

‘You don’t look much like an Edwin,’ he commented, flipping papers on his clipboard. ‘Isobel.’

‘Yeah, see, I shaved my beard off this morning.’ I bounced nervously on the spot.

He narrowed his eyes at me and snatched up my pass. ‘What?’

‘Never mind,’ I mumbled. ‘Edwin should have rung to confirm. Or maybe he emailed? See—’ I tapped my pass ‘—I’m from the same newspaper. We’re really very good quality. Paper … of … the year.’

We really weren’t. In fact, I don’t think we’d ever been nominated.

Mr Security turned and walked away, mumbling into his walkie talkie and casting suspicious glances my way, brows tripping over themselves in confusion. Well, my fly wasn’t undone (I’d checked), I’d brushed my hair (with my fingers) and I’d stuffed half a packet of gum in my mouth on the Tube, but maybe there was still gutter mud on my backside. I did a very subtle feel about the seat of my pants as he walked away. No, all good.

A few, ‘Are you sure?’s later, he ambled his way back and handed me my press pass.

‘Right this way … Miss Bennett.’

I smiled tightly, and followed him through the foyer of the theatre, past posters for new shows that barely registered and a bookshop that pulled at me with the preternatural strength of an ACME magnet, and into the fittingly titled Olivier Theatre. Theatre might not have been my thing, but I knew who Sir Laurence Olivier was.

The rear door swept open to reveal stunning velvet seats set in steep tiers that fanned around and forced your attention in one direction: the stage. Today’s ensemble was simple. Two seats, a small table, and two glasses of water which were being eagerly replaced by someone balancing a clipboard in one hand and a pitcher in the other. Another journalist passed me on the stairs. She offered the dewy-eyed, flushed-cheek look of a teenage girl at a boyband concert, eyebrows up near her hairline as she continued nattering excitedly into her phone. If she were a cartoon, her heart-shaped eyes might pop from her head and she’d thump her foot on the floor.