Victoria Connelly - The Runaway Actress

‘I’m awake!’ Connie said.

‘I want twenty stomach crunches right now!’

Connie muttered something under her breath.

‘What was that, sweetie? You want to do fifty?’ he said with a naughty grin.

‘Go away, Danny!’ Connie said, sitting up in bed, her red hair tousled and tangled.

‘You don’t pay me to go away. You pay me to get your ass moving! Come on,’ he said, clapping a pair of enormous hands together.

Connie sighed. She loved Danny dearly. He was loyal and sweet and always made her laugh, but there were certain mornings when she wished he didn’t exist.

Ten minutes later and they were in the basement gymnasium and Connie was being put through her paces. It was a rude awakening and she really should have been used to it by now because Danny had been turning up three times a week for the past four years.

‘Your body is your business,’ she would silently chant to herself whilst pounding on the running machine. ‘You have to keep in shape,’ she’d repeat with each stretch on the rowing machine.

But if only her body was her business. The trouble was, everyone seemed to have something to say about her body. Her trainer, her agent, her publicist – to say nothing of the press who regularly snapped her from all angles and then ran headlines such as ‘Podgy Connie Piles on the Pounds’. The unhappy truth was that acting was about more than her ability to inhabit a role and convince an audience that her emotions were real. It was about how she looked both on screen and off and that pressure could sometimes be unbearable.

After ten minutes on the exercise bike, Connie hung her head.

‘Can we go running, Danny? I want to get some fresh air.’ She looked up and caught Danny’s eye. He didn’t look happy with the suggestion.

‘You know what happened last time.’

‘I know.’

‘We weren’t so much running as running away! ’

Connie nodded, remembering the hoard of paps that had torn after them with their intrusively long lenses.

‘I wish I could run away,’ Connie said.

‘Aw, don’t say that!’ Danny said, his face wrinkling in dismay.

‘But I do . I want to go somewhere where I can just be me for a while without a telephoto lens poking at me or some journalist tearing me apart.’

‘I don’t think such a place exists,’ Danny said.

‘No,’ Connie said. ‘You’re probably right. But can’t we at least try to pretend?’

‘You want to go to the park?’

Connie nodded.

‘We’ll have to go in my car, then. Everybody knows yours.’

Connie grinned and grabbed her towel.

Danny’s black RV was parked in the driveway. ‘Get in the back and duck down,’ he said.

Connie climbed in the back of his car, buckled up and then laid her head down on the seat. She’d given Danny her remote control to open the wrought iron gates and, as usual, there was a group of paparazzi camping outside.

‘Don’t they have homes to go to?’ Danny asked as he hit the gas.

‘Apparently not,’ Connie said. ‘I thought about inviting them in for dinner one evening. I’d just come back from a charity gala and felt a bit lonely. It’s always odd to be surrounded by hundreds of people one minute and then to come back here and be totally alone.’

‘But you didn’t invite them in, did you?’ Danny asked, eyebrows raised.

‘No, of course not!’

Danny breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Okay, it’s safe to surface.’

Connie got up from the back seat and it was then that she noticed the newspaper on the seat beside her. She picked it up.

‘Oh, don’t bother reading that,’ Danny said a little too quickly. ‘There’s nothing in it.’

‘Danny, you’re a terrible liar,’ she said, opening the paper and staring in horror at the headline that greeted her on page three.

Connie Alone!

Stunning actress, Connie Gordon, one of the world’s most famous movie stars, attended last night’s ‘Cream of the Screen’ awards ceremony on her own. The 29-year-old actress recently broke up with fellow actor, Forrest Greaves, and it would seem that she’s not been lucky in love since …

Accompanying the story was a photograph of Connie from the red carpet but, instead of printing one of the hundreds of pictures they must have taken of Connie’s famous megawatt smile, they’d published one of her frowning. It must have been the millisecond that she’d caught her heels on her dress. There was also a photograph of the heavily-pregnant Candy with the caption: ‘Expecting great things – the woman Forrest Greaves left Connie for’.

‘Goddamn it!’ she cursed and then her eye caught something else. It was a quote from her mother .

‘“Connie is devastated,” Vanessa Gordon told us. “She’d already started planning the wedding with Forrest”.’

‘They’ve interviewed my mother!’ she shouted.

‘I told you not to read it!’ Danny said from the front seat.

‘Why do they do that? Why? ’

‘To sell more papers, that’s all.’

Connie sighed. ‘Take me home,’ she said.

‘What? You don’t want to go running?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t feel like it any more.’

‘But it might do you some good. You know, pound it out of your system.’ He looked at her through the rear-view mirror and noticed the tears sparkling in her eyes. ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said.

Once Danny had dropped her off, Connie kicked off her trainers and wandered through to her office. Her personal assistant had left her diary open on the desk and there was a planner pinned to the wall too. Connie glanced at it. She was meant to be starting rehearsals next week for her next film – and the thought of it made her groan.

‘It’ll do your career no end of good,’ Bob Braskett, her agent, had told her. ‘This is a real up-and-coming director. Teenagers really go for him. You’ll gain a whole new audience here.’

There was also a magazine interview penned in, and two charity events. She sighed. If only she could get away from it all. If only she could escape!

The telephone rang and made Connie jump. She didn’t normally answer the phone but, as her PA wasn’t in until later, she picked it up herself.

‘Connie!’ a voice drawled. It was Forrest Greaves.

‘What do you want?’ she snapped.

‘Aw, don’t be like that, sweetheart. You didn’t give me a chance to talk to you last night.’

‘Yeah? Well, I said all I wanted to say,’ Connie said.

‘Yeah, but I didn’t.’

She sighed. ‘What do you want, Forrest?’

‘I want to say that I miss you,’ he said, ‘and I think we should give it another go.’

‘What?’ Connie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘I miss you so much, honey.’

‘Don’t honey me! You’re about to have a child with that Candy woman, for heaven’s sake.’

‘That could be anybody’s child,’ he said. ‘Anyway, she means nothing to me. It’s you I want to be with.’

Connie felt a shiver of disgust creep up her spine. ‘Forrest—’

‘Listen,’ he interrupted. ‘I know I messed up but I swear that won’t happen again. You’re my one and only, Connie. You know we’re right for each other. I know you do.’

‘But I don’t want anything to do with you, Forrest. I—’

‘I mean – come on – I’m an award-winning actor now. I’m right up there with you, baby. Just think about it – what a couple we’ll make. We’ll send Hollywood dizzy. They won’t be able to get enough of us! “Forrest and Connie”, “Greaves and Gordon”! Just imagine the headlines!’