Page 24 of The Chemistry Test
Cam
I put Callie back on the passenger seat next to me after leaving the vets’.
‘What are we going to do with you?’ I sigh. I woke up and found her shaking in a completely different way than she usually does, so I quickly took her temperature.
Mum’s told me so many times that trembling can be a sign of a fever in kittens, but I’ve never seen it in a kitten who already trembles. It looked exhausting. I called the vets’ straight away and they booked her in as soon as they could.
During the appointment, they said it was something to do with her kidneys and I’d caught it just in time.
I feel a little shaken, so I drive to Mum’s again rather than taking her straight home.
She’s so weak and lethargic that there’s no need for me to call ahead to set up the other playpen. She’ll just sleep in the carry case.
When I get there, I say hello to the chickens out the back and find the birdhouse with the blocked peephole. I undo the latch and type the code into the key safe inside, before walking back round the front. I let myself in and find Mum working in the study.
‘Cameron! What a lovely surprise,’ she says, getting up to hug me. ‘Let’s go and sit downstairs, sweetheart. I was just finishing up for the morning anyway.’
I glance at the clock and then at her daily planner on the wall. Her lunch break isn’t for another two hours, but I pretend not to notice as I take Callie down to the living room while Mum makes us a coffee.
On the mantelpiece above the fireplace sits a photo of me and Gran at my first premiere, as well as the elixir book prop I used during season one.
On set, I had so much fun hiding Polaroid photos of everyone inside it (ruining a few scenes in the process when they were discovered mid-take), that the showrunners, Amber and Mike, let me keep it.
Probably to stop me from doing it again.
My hand hovers over the premiere photo, but I quickly pick up the book instead as I hear Mum coming back through the hall. I sit down just before she comes through the door.
‘Okay, tell me what’s going on with Little Miss Mayhem, then,’ she says, looking into the carry case at a sleeping Callie.
‘She’s back on antibiotics again, this time for her kidneys,’ I say. She’s only seven weeks old, but she’s been unwell so many times already. Scarily unwell, I mean, as even her baseline isn’t particularly good.
‘You did well to notice the fever shakes in a CH cat,’ Mum says. ‘I know from experience it takes a trained eye.’
‘What can I say?’ I smile. ‘I learned from the best of the best.’
She shakes her head as she sits down next to me. ‘This was all you, Cam. You should be so proud of yourself. Gran would’ve seen that from up there and I bet she’s proud too,’ she says, looking down at the elixir book in my lap.
‘I think Gran’s watching over her too, you know. I woke up way earlier than I normally do, and something was telling me to check on her, even though I never normally do. She was in such a bad way. I hate to think what would’ve happened if I hadn’t found her when I did.’
Mum gives me a wistful smile. It’s the sort of thing she usually tries to say to me when I’m at my lowest. Stuff like this doesn’t usually come out of my own mouth.
‘I don’t doubt that for a second,’ she says, picking up her mug of tea.
‘Guardian angels come in handy, sometimes.’ She pauses to take a sip, contemplating.
‘Have you given any thought about what you’ll do regarding filming?
I know you’ve been worried about it, but I found these in the conservatory and thought you might like to read through them again,’ she says, pulling a small stack of papers from the bottom of the coffee table.
‘They’re from the Comic Relief sketch you did. ’
She hands them over to me and I flick through them.
It’s surprising how neat my handwriting can be when I put in the effort; it’s usually too cramped for other people to read.
‘I forgot about these,’ I say. It’s all the mind maps and visual aids I created to help me remember my lines that winter.
‘Was that the year Gran went on her cruise?’
Mum smiles. ‘That’s the one.’
I still remember some of my lines from that sketch even now, eighteen months later, but I completely forgot what I had to do to learn them in the first place.
‘These notes are actually pretty impressive,’ I say, showing her the visual representations I’d drawn, like a comic book.
She beams at me. ‘ You did that, Cam.’ And I know exactly what she’s trying to say. I pulled off a few scenes without Gran’s help once, so I can do it again. As if it’s that simple.
‘It took so much work though,’ I say, thinking back to the late nights and early mornings juggling it all.
‘The best things in life usually do. The real question is whether it was worth it.’
She glances up at my premiere photo again, more openly this time, but still not wanting to outright ask about the whole acting thing.
Mike and Amber will be in London for the next premiere, so I have until then to make my final decision. It’s the first one we’ve ever had in the UK, so I have no excuse not to attend the cast meetings the day before. I’ll be making the decision on the tenth of January, whether I’m ready or not.
I lean back on the sofa, reflecting on her question. It’s a no-brainer, but only because she’s not asking the right one.
‘Of course it was worth it,’ I say. ‘Even if it had taken a hundred times more work than it did, it would’ve been worth it.’
I only had a small role in the skit too, but it was one of the most incredible experiences of my entire life. There’s something so fun about being on a set and having a whole team of people there to film you. Front and centre. Even if you’re not technically the star of the show.
It always felt like I was in some sort of alternate reality on set. Out there playing pretend on a weekday when everyone else was actually working, yet I was getting paid more than most of them. At least, on the HBO show I was.
‘But it’s different now,’ I say. ‘Me and Gran were in it together. Now, the thought of going back just reminds me of her.’
She smiles, dejectedly. ‘I know, darling. It hurts. And everything’s constantly changing, but that’s also the thing that brings us back to feeling like we might be alright again – well, usually it is.
You know—’ Her lip quivers and she looks up for a moment, blinking rapidly.
‘I hated Uncle David’s cat when he first came to us. ’
I remember that year like it was yesterday. ‘What? No, you didn’t.’ I used to see her cuddling Smoky all the time, especially that first week. Full-on, head-in-his-fur cuddles too, not just gentle little pets. ‘You’re not even capable of hating a cat.’
She swallows. ‘And yet, I did Cam. I used to think he was the most horrid reminder of losing David. I cried so much, I had to bury my head in his fur whenever I heard you coming, so you couldn’t see.
And I hated myself for it – the only cat I’d ever disliked was my dear brother’s.
But you’re right, I didn’t actually hate the cat, and the feeling was temporary.
’ Her face lifts suddenly, smiling. ‘After a while, he stopped being a painful reminder to me, and just became—’ Her voice catches in her throat again.
I get up to hug her, finishing the sentence as I sit back down. ‘He just became Smoky.’
She laugh-cries. ‘Yes! He just became our lovable, little Smoky. And instead of painful reminders of David, he created new, happy memories that we wouldn’t change for the world, would we?’
I shake my head.
‘I kind of hoped acting would be like that for you. Yes, it’ll be hard at first, but what if it turns into the best thing in the world all over again? To you, I mean.’
I let my head flop back against the hard leather backrest. Truthfully, I’m having a hard time picturing it.
At least, on the set of Artemisia. But if I don’t go, I majorly limit my options if I ever want to act on other projects.
And I miss my opportunity to keep hanging out with my work-family and playing Arturo , my all-time favourite character (who literally feels like an extension of myself at this point), that I’d never get back.
It scrambles my head every time the conversation comes up for this exact reason.
‘I don’t know, Mum. You know that.’
We finished filming in early January, just a few weeks before losing Gran. So, the next season will premiere early next year and then, for the first time since we started, we’re scheduled to take an extra year to film the next season due to strikes.
Since Josie, who plays my on-screen partner, is pregnant and will be off on maternity leave from October onwards, they’ve agreed to let us both have this winter off and start filming again next summer.
We don’t have nearly as many scenes as the main characters, so we’ll definitely have enough time, but it’ll still be weird to not spend December and January filming in New Zealand like we normally do.
I don’t know if I’m excited about it or dreading it.
‘Have you told Mike and Amber that?’ Mum asks.
They know about Gran, but they don’t know how depressed I’ve been ever since. ‘They don’t need to know yet,’ I say, careful not to get her hopes up. ‘I still have plenty of time to tell them even if I do decide to stop, though.’
She looks like she wants to object, but instead, she just nods and sips her tea.