‘Yes, it will!’
‘Oh?’
He put down the jewelled robin ornament he’d been toying with and put his head on one side, as if to say, ‘You aren’t going to spoil my fun, are you?’
‘I’m not an actor. And – don’t say what I know you’re going to say because that’s not the crux of it. I’m not an actor and I don’t want to appear on film all over the world doing things that, to me, are private.’
Jasper put down the robin and reached for my hands, which were freely given.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘The thing is, it’s a stipulation of the studio that you and I appear in this film. After that story about us shagging in that Mayfair square the other week, it’s golden pre-publicity. It’s the reason they finally decided to back it.’
‘Oh, God. How about it being a good film by a good director?’
‘Not good enough, I’m afraid.’ Jasper shook his head. ‘My reputation’s high with the critics but I’m not box-office enough for that. I have to make concessions. One of them is that you play Walters.’
My breath was too short for speech for a while.
Eventually I looked him full in the face.
‘I am not,’ I said, slowly and firmly, ‘doing or showing anything on film that I wouldn’t do at the museum. No nudity. No sex acts.’
‘It’s called acting, Sarah. Obviously nobody is going to actually fuck.’
‘No, but the other stuff. You know what I mean. I’m not showing my bare bum to the world.’
‘I think you already did,’ said Jasper, and he was referring to the newspaper scandal.
‘That was extremely blurred and hardly recognisable as a bum,’ I replied. ‘Plus, it wasn’t meant to be public.’
‘OK,’ said Jasper. ‘I talked about this with Jim already.’
‘You did? Why didn’t you say?’
‘I like watching your agitation sometimes. It’s all right. Relax. Christ.’ He put his arms up to deflect a sudden hail of small wooden angels. ‘Sorry, OK?’
‘You’d better be. So what have you and Jim cooked up?’
‘He’s fine with the idea of body doubles for us. So in the kinky scenes, your head and face will be there but the body will belong to another woman. And the same for me, as the man.’
‘Body doubles? So … we won’t actually be doing the naughty stuff on camera?’
‘Oh, we will. But when we get into the editing suite we’ll swap our body parts for somebody else’s. We have to do the scenes, Sarah,’ he added quickly, ‘or the facial expressions and noises won’t be right.’
‘You dub the sound over it anyway,’ I protested.
‘Some of it. Come on. The world will see no more than your face and a bare arm and foot or so. That has to be good enough, right?’
I put down a length of tinsel and sat on the stairs, my chin in my hands.
‘I don’t know. This is too weird for me. It’s a long way out of my comfort zone.’
‘I know. That’s why you’re considering it.’ He winked at me.
I flapped my hands at him.
‘Come on, Sarah. You hate your comfort zone. You’re never there. You’re like the absentee landlord of the place.’
‘That’s not true,’ I countered. ‘Just because I do all sorts of things I’d never have countenanced with anyone else – with you. It’s because of you. You’re my comfort zone, because I trust you.’