The Extra

ROMY'S POV

The soundstage in Culver City had been dressed as a hospital ward, and I had been dressed as Nurse Number Two.

My three lines were on a card in my pocket. Doctor, she's crashing. I'll get the cart. Should I call her family? I had said them to the bathroom mirror at six that morning, while Evander slept, and again to the driver, who pretended not to hear.

Tamsin Holt arrived at nine-thirty with two assistants, a personal makeup artist and an iced coffee nobody else was allowed to touch. She walked past the row of extras without looking at any of us. Then she stopped and came back.

"Oh my God," she said. "It's Raff's leftovers."

Somebody behind the camera laughed. Then a few more people laughed, mostly because she was the lead and they wanted to keep their jobs.

"Hi, Tamsin," I said. "Congratulations on your engagement."

Her smile slipped for half a second, and then she put it back on. "Thanks. It's a real ring, you know. Not the kind you have to film yourself crying over."

She walked away before I could answer, and I stood there in my blue scrubs while the laughter died down.

We shot the scene four times. On the first take, Tamsin said her line too early and walked straight through my mark, so I had to step back to avoid her. On the second, she turned her head at the exact moment I spoke, so the camera only caught the back of hers.

"Nurse Two," the director called. "You're blocking her light. Stay on your mark, please."

"I was on my mark."

"Then stay on it better."

Somebody pushed a paper cup of water into my hand between takes. It was a production assistant with a headset, curly red hair and a clipboard covered in stickers.

"Drink that," she said quietly. "And for the record, that was her, not you. I watched the monitor."

"Thanks," I said. "I'm Romy."

"Saffy." She grinned. "Don't let her get to you. She did the same thing to a guest star last week, and the poor guy cried in the parking lot."

At eleven we broke for lunch, and that was when I heard a voice from the stage door that stopped me in the middle of the aisle.

"Tamsin, babe! I brought you a matcha."

It was Paloma, the sister who thought I was in Atlanta.

I didn't think. I walked fast to the costume area at the back of the stage and stepped behind a rolling rack of white coats, with my back against the wall.

Through the gaps between the hangers, I could see them. Paloma kissed Tamsin on both cheeks and handed her the cup. They were laughing together, easy and familiar, and I realized they were old friends. I had never known.

"Guess who's working as an extra today," Tamsin said.

"Who?"

"Raff's ex. Your sister."

Paloma laughed. "Romy? She's in Atlanta."

"Then she has a twin, because she was standing right there an hour ago."

There was a short pause. I watched Paloma's smile stay exactly where it was while her eyes went slowly across the stage.

"Saffy!" someone called. "Where's the nurse? We need her for wardrobe."

Saffy was standing two feet from my rack. She looked straight at me through the coats, and then she turned around.

"She already left," she called back. "She said she had a flight."

Paloma's eyes moved on. I didn't breathe again until she had turned back to Tamsin.

Then the stage door opened a second time, and Raff walked in to collect his fiancée. He kissed Tamsin and hugged my sister, and he was wearing the watch I had bought him for his birthday. I stayed behind the white coats with my hand pressed over my mouth, and I waited until all three of them had gone.

When I finally came out from behind the coats, Saffy was waiting for me with her clipboard pressed to her chest.

"Okay," she said. "I just lied to a woman holding a matcha for you, so I think you owe me an explanation."

"That was my stepsister."

"I figured. You both have the same look on your faces when you're pretending to smile." She pulled a pen out of her hair and wrote a phone number on the back of my call sheet. "You don't have to tell me now. But if you ever need someone to say you already left, I'm very good at it."

I folded the call sheet into my pocket. It was the first kind thing anyone on a set had done for me in months.

We wrapped at five. On the way out to the car, I passed a group of men in suits coming in from the parking lot with the producer, and I kept my head down and my cap on.

I got home at seven, still smelling of hairspray. I showered off the set makeup, put on one of the new dresses Delphine had chosen and left two shopping bags by the stairs, so I would look the part of a woman who had spent her day in Beverly Hills. Then I sat in the living room with a book I wasn't reading.

He came in at nine. He put his phone and his keys on the side table, took off his jacket and looked at me.

"Where were you today?"

It was a quiet, simple question, and I had no good answer to it.

"Shopping," I said.

He didn't answer for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly, picked his jacket back up and went upstairs without another word.

I knew he hadn't believed me.

What I didn't know was how much he'd seen.