After our second meeting, I found myself wondering if it’d be as long again. I hoped not. In fact, it was three weeks later that he showed up on set, just as he’d promised. The studio lot was in Burbank, the other side of the hills from the city. I liked the drive there in the early morning, before most people were awake, the cool fragrance of jasmine and fresh dew hanging in the air before the California sun rose too high. My call was for 6.30 a.m. which meant getting up around 4.30. But I was lucky this time – for Helen of Troy they’d had me in at 5 a.m. every day for the whole shoot, messing around with wigs and blue eyeshadow, my scalp red-raw from burns with curling irons for months afterwards. It was always quiet first thing in the morning with the executives and producers absent and I liked it. I could sip on coffee in my tiny bungalow, just me and Dilly, my dresser, and Steve, the make-up artist. Later, the costume designer and on-set publicist would arrive, and then there was Moss Fisher, Monumental’s head of publicity, whom I’d first met that awful evening in Beverly Hills, so long ago now.
