I AM STANDING on a rostrum in my old school library. An audience of thirty or so people is applauding, I am smiling and mouthing “thank you” and I know that they all hate me. The audience looks like people I used to know seven years ago, but less hopeful and fatter. Actually, they’re not fat, they’re normal sized, but I’m an actor. We have to stay thin because our bodies are a tool of our trade. A lot of us have eating disorders and that creates an atmosphere of anxiety around food. The applauding audience isn’t fat; I’m just London-actress thin, which is almost-too-thin. I look down. The rostrum is composed of big ply board cubes that fit together. We are standing on five but the corner one is missing; maybe they ran out of cubes, or one is broken. It’s like standing on a slide puzzle, where one tile is missing and the picture is jumbled. This seems hugely significant to me while it is happening: we’re in a puzzle and a big bit is missing. The whole afternoon feels like a hyper-real dream sequence so far, interspersed with flashes of terror and disbelief.
