Page 3 of Anxious Hearts

‘Shooting now …’

Finn’s mind emptied of his own life.

‘Clear the sets …’

Only his character’s thoughts were real now.

‘Roll sound … quiet, please … and action.’

Finn became Sonny Lord. ‘What did you think I was going to do, Rebecca?’ he said. ‘Act like you didn’t cheat on me?’ He felt the acid reflux of betrayal. ‘Act like you didn’t take every good thing we had and destroy it?’ His spirit ached with the emptiness of loss.

Monica, who played Rebecca, began to cry. ‘Please, Sonny,’ she said. ‘Please don’t throw it all away because of one mistake.’

Finn felt Sonny’s outrage. Tears stung his eyes and his hands started to shake. ‘I will never, ever forgive you for this.’ A tear ran down his cheek. ‘You’ve left me alone in the world. Without you, I have nobody.’

‘Cut!’ the director yelled. ‘That was brilliant, Finn.’ He applauded and the crew followed suit.

Finn’s head was buzzing. He wiped the tears from his face.

Monica placed a hand on his chest and smiled. ‘Nice work.’

‘Thank you,’ Finn said, breathing out long and hard. He stumbled off the set and opened the dam gates that let his own life flood back into his heart and mind.

‘She must have been special.’

Finn spun around to see Monica had followed him. ‘Who?’

‘Whoever broke your heart hard enough to bring out that scene.’

Finn shifted uncomfortably. Sonny’s life wasn’t his, but the emotions always were; he was able to divorce his feelings from the actual memory and then apply them to his characters’ lives as needed.

It made him a good actor, but the comedown after was like plummeting into an instant hangover. The pain reduced him to rock-bottom.

Finn rallied his bravado. ‘No girl,’ he said. ‘I’m just an empty shell. You know that.’

Monica smiled. ‘See you tomorrow, Finley.’

Finn returned to his dressing room and lay down on the couch.

He could feel it coming and now was the time to stop it in its tracks.

He took a deep breath, held the air in his lungs and exhaled slowly.

Over and over and over. He went to the sink and splashed water on his face.

Ran it through his hair. He looked at himself in the mirror.

‘You can do this, Finn. Stay calm. Hold it together.’

There was a knock at the door. ‘It’s open,’ he called, not turning around. He quickly dried his face.

His agent, Esme Rubenstein, barrelled in. ‘Finley, darling, I come bearing marvellous news.’ She stopped in the middle of the dressing room. ‘What’s wrong? Why are you staring at yourself in the mirror? Are you having another one of your dreadful panic attacks?’

Finn chuckled. You’d never die wondering what Esme was thinking. He turned around. ‘No, I’m not having a panic attack.’ Which was technically true, because he’d been able to keep it at bay. ‘It was just a big day on set. What are you doing here, anyway?’

Esme smiled, huge white teeth framed by bright red lipstick.

She placed her hands on her wide hips and flicked her voluminous dark hair over her shoulders, clearly channelling the short-lived theatre career she never tired of recounting.

‘This is too monumental to reveal over the phone. Come.’ She sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her. ‘Sit.’

Finn did as instructed.

Esme took his hands in her own like a proud mother. ‘We’ve got an audition.’ Her eyes sparkled with mischief. She said no more, happy to draw the moment out.

‘For what?’ Finn said patiently.

Esme shivered with excitement. She was the world’s most dramatic 55-year-old woman. ‘A Netflix original. Feature-length film. Huge budget. Filming in Australia but set in the US. Hollywood co-star.’

Finn’s pulse quickened. ‘Who?’

‘They’re not saying. But she’s A-list. This is the big one, Finley.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Fuck, indeed!’

They both laughed.

‘When?’ Finn asked.

‘Tape’s due in three weeks. In-person callbacks in April when the Hollywooder is in town.’

Finn stood up, his body charged with excitement and fear.

He’d been a lead character on the evening soap Henderson Springs for six seasons but hadn’t managed to make the transition from television to film yet.

He’d gone close with a handful of auditions and even landed a part in a movie that had ended up being scuttled before a single scene was filmed.

Finn was worried that, at twenty-eight, he was getting too old to make his big-screen debut.

He paced the room. ‘Okay, okay, I need to not get ahead of myself here. It’s just an audition.’

‘Wrong attitude!’ Esme snapped. ‘This is your audition. You were born for this role, Finley.’

He stopped, suddenly aware of the ludicrousness of that statement. ‘Wait, I don’t even know what the role is.’

Esme smiled conspiratorially. ‘You’re auditioning for the lead. It’s a romantic comedy and your character is somewhere between Ryan Gosling in Crazy, Stupid, Love and Jude Law in The Holiday. ’

Finn raised his eyebrows. ‘So, basically, the most desirable man on the planet?’

Esme jumped to her feet and clapped her hands. ‘That’s the spirit! I’ll have the scene sent over tonight. Start working on your American accent.’

***

Finn was driving at precisely the speed limit.

Without using cruise control, he had trained his foot to apply the exact amount of pressure needed to maintain a steady speed, no fluctuations.

There was two cars’ distance between him and the vehicle in front and two cars’ distance between him and the vehicle behind.

Until a purple hatchback ducked into his lane and filled his rear-view mirror. It was driving so close, Finn could read the word scrawled across the female driver’s T-shirt: Fearless .

Finn checked his left shoulder, but there was a car driving alongside him so he couldn’t change lanes to shake the tailgater.

Up ahead, a large intersection loomed. The light was still green.

‘Come on,’ Finn whispered. ‘Don’t change now.

’ And then, as if to spite his request, the light changed to amber.

Finn quickly calculated the chance of running the red light compared to the chance of being rear-ended if he hit the brakes. There was really no choice. The fearless woman was driving so close, a collision was inevitable.

He applied a tiny amount of extra pressure to the accelerator.

His heart rate quickened. A sound like rushing waters welled up in his ears.

His vision sharpened and he watched the road, the changing light and the car behind in microsecond transitions.

In his peripheral vision, he saw a family waiting to cross at the intersection.

He entered the junction. Stopped breathing.

The light was amber. It held, held, held …

and changed to red just before he reached the other side.

His head thundered with an explosion of white noise.

His lungs ached to bursting point. The car windows pressed in on him and the pressure built as though he was going deeper and deeper into the ocean.

Had he killed anyone? Had a child been crossing the road that he didn’t see?

He couldn’t think straight. Could only see the child he might have killed.

In his rear-view mirror, cars crossed sedately over the intersection in the other direction. The fearless woman was gone. The family walked across the road.

He pulled over and tried to breathe, but only the top part of his chest would take in any air.

Sweat poured into his eyes. He opened the windows and tried to swallow oxygen with great heaving gulps.

Tried and tried to force it deep into his lungs.

With shaking hands, he gripped the steering wheel, holding on to sanity as though letting go would plunge him into an abyss from which he could never return.

He gripped it tighter and tighter until the shaking began to subside and his breathing slowed.

The white noise reduced to a steady din and he wiped the sweat from his eyes.

He was ready to confront whatever he had done.

Finn waited for the traffic to clear, pulled out and did a U-turn to take him back through the intersection.

He scanned the area for any sign of the accident he had caused by running the light.

There was nothing. People continued on their way as though he had done no wrong.

He made another U-turn to put him back in the spot where the fearless woman had forced him over the intersection.

No, that wasn’t true. She hadn’t forced him; he’d chosen to do it.

He should have hit the brakes. Should never have crossed when the light was going to change to red.

He would have preferred she smash into the back of his car, at least then he would know he hadn’t caused it because he hadn’t done anything wrong.

He could’ve answered a police officer’s questions, told the truth in the courtroom.

Now, the truth would damn him with every syllable.

Finn took a left turn and drove slowly down the same street the family had crossed into. He spotted them quickly: a mother, father, boy on a scooter and baby in a pram.

Any one of them could be dead now because of you, he thought.

He reminded himself by looking at them that they weren’t dead.

They were alive and oblivious to the tragedy that lurked so closely behind them.

They were alive, but what about the boy on the scooter?

What if he had seen Finn cross over when the light was red and remembered it?

What if, when he was a young man driving himself, he thought about what Finn had done and modelled his behaviour?

What if, because of Finn, that future young man ran down a pregnant mother, killing the woman and her baby?

Finn would have two deaths on his hands and a man in prison because of his actions.

The guilt that welled up inside him felt like melted lead filling his veins. It was heavy and slow, pressing his body down into the seat and making every part of him ache with weary desperation.

Finn breathed deeply, calmly. It was done now. He was a killer. He could never take it back. He could never make it better.

It was done. And he deserved the slow and creeping death that overtook his body. Made him numb and unfeeling.

Finn drove slowly home.