Page 78 of The Ex Factor

Toby paused. ‘I knew you were both in there.’

Ashley rolled her eyes. Round fifty-eight of the psychosexual games was commencing.

‘Never mind that!’ Jax bellowed. ‘Figure out how to turn the alarm off!’

Molly closed her eyes and let out a long, exhausted sigh against Ashley’s chest. ‘They’ll kill us all,’ she said quietly.

Ashley let go of Molly’s hand and popped her head out of the curtain to find Toby now arguing with Dave the driver, who was demanding to know what the hell he’d done to his bus and his eardrums.

‘Yeah,’ Ashley said, her voice flat. ‘Probably.’

She turned back to find Molly pulling her ripped knickers on, tying them off at the waist with a thin knot. She swung her legs out of Ashley’s bunk and walked back to her own without another word, holding onto the knot to prevent exposing herself to the various squabbling coach inhabitants.

It was a pretty amusing walk of shame. But to Ashley, nothing was funny about it.

Twenty-Eight

Molly sat in her bunk, curtain open, angrily gripping the thin sheaf of A4 paper. She was staring at a line of dialogue she’d read fourteen times already, trying to pull out subtext. But her brain kept sliding off the words and landing directly on the sensation of Ashley’s mouth on her neck six hours ago.

She hadn’t just let it happen. She’d initiated it. She had opened the curtain and flung herself at Ashley with force. It was a tactical error of massive proportions. It made her stomach feel hollow and weirdly hot now, so she decided to simply pretend it belonged to a different timeline. Because it did. It was a hangover from another time. It had nothing to do with now. They were business partners in a fake-relationship scheme designed to save Ashley’s pop career and get Molly into an audition room. That was it.

Yes, right, the audition of Molly’s career. That was something to think about, wasn’t it? The big one. Eyes on the prize, Sullivan.

She was up for the role of Clare, the younger of the money/garment laundering sisters. The scene she had was Clare breaking up with a bloke named Gary in the middle of a crowded pub because he’d managed to lose their deposit on a flat.

Molly tried the line out loud. ‘I’m not doing this, Gary. I’m just not.’

It sounded flat. It sounded like a woman reading words off a piece of paper.

She was getting nowhere. But she needed to look completely focused when she next saw Ashley. Otherwise, there would be questions, and questions led to talking about feelings, which Molly was buggered if she was doing. She wasn’t letting Ashley clear her conscience with the old, ‘Hey, I want you to know you mean a lot to me. As a friend.’

Fuck that.

The bathroom door clicked open and Molly, despite her firm intention not to meet Ashley’s eye, immediately looked up. Ashley walked out wearing an oversized black tour hoodie with her own face on it and a faint smudge of toothpaste near the collar. Her blonde hair was tidy now, completely stripped of the sex ruffle Molly had given it.

‘Alright?’ Ashley said.

‘Fine,’ Molly said, keeping her eyes glued to the script. ‘Just rehearsing. After a fashion. Where’s the trio of tits?’

‘God knows.’ Ashley padded down the aisle to the bus kitchen area, picked up the kettle, shook it to check the water level, and plugged it in. ‘How’s it going?’ she called back down the corridor.

‘Great. Perfectly. I’m just preparing to shit the bed at this audition. They were right to resist me. I can’t do the drama part. I’m a court jester. Hey, do you think it’s easy to get started as a children’s party entertainer? Or do you think it’s who you know?’

‘You’re going to be fine.’ Ashley filled two mugs from the kettle, watching her across the narrow space.

The silence between them grew heavy, full of the unspoken weight of the previous night’s bunk-creaking.

Ashley cleared her throat, a small, awkward sound. ‘Look—’

‘I need a reader,’ Molly interrupted, her voice a bit too loud, a bit too fast. ‘For the scene. If you’re not doing anything right now.’

Ashley walked back down the aisle and stood right next to Molly’s bunk. Molly realised Ashley was holding out a steaming mug of coffee for her as well as her own. She refused to be touched by the gesture.

‘I can read. Gimme the pages,’ Ashley said.

Molly swung her legs off the edge of the mattress, letting her feet dangle over the carpet as she swapped her script pages for the coffee with a muttered thanks. She took a hot, deliberate sip, letting the warmth hit her throat while Ashley leaned against the wooden frame of the bunk across the narrow gap, squinting down at the paper.

‘Am I Gary?’ Ashley asked.