“Cool!” Emmet snorts. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one up there on display.”

“You know the lines,” Bill-E murmurs, then laughs like Davida when she’s trying to calm a nervous actor. “You probably know your lines better than anyone on the set, even Davida. You’re a professional. They’ll come when you’re filming. And if not, who cares? Nobody gets it right the first time. And even if they do, Davida reshoots it anyway. You’ll nail it the fifth or sixth time.”

Bill-E’s not exaggerating about the reshoots. Every scene is played out at least six or seven times, from various angles, the actors trying out different expressions and tones. Repetition is part and parcel of the film-maker’s life. I don’t know how they stand it. I’d go cuckoo if I had to do the same thing over and over, day after day.

“He’s quite the expert, isn’t he?” Emmet remarks cuttingly.

“Hey, man, I’m just trying to help,” Bill-E says, unruffled.

“For someone with no real experience, you certainly know a lot about it.”

Bill-E laughs Emmet’s criticism away. “I’m just calling it like I see it. If you’d rather I removed myself, no problem. Come on, Grubbs, let’s go and—”

“No!” Emmet pleads. “I’m sorry. I’m just all wound up. One last time, please. If I don’t get it right, we’ll quit and all go play foosball. OK?”

“OK,” Bill-E says. “But don’t forget—coooooolllllllll.”

Emmet shoots him an exasperated glance, then shares a grin with me. Focusing, he repeats his lines silently to himself, then tries them out loud and all too predictably blows them again. As soon as he breaks down, we drag him off to the foosball table and keep him there, though we can’t stop him muttering the lines as he plays.

Dinner with Dervish, Juni and some others, in the ginormous catering tent at the heart of Slawter. Everybody talking at once, a nice buzz in the air. A mime artist signals to me that he’d like the salt and pepper. His name is Chai and he’s a bit of a nutcase. He never speaks, although he’s not mute. Apparently he’s perfectly chatty when he’s not working. But throughout the duration of a shoot, he keeps his lips sealed. It doesn’t matter that he has a tiny part in the movie and will only be filming for a few days. Chai considers himself a method actor.

“How are you two faring?” Juni asks Bill-E and me. “Enjoying yourselves?”

“Totally!” Bill-E gushes. “It’s great. Incredibly invigorating and inspiring. I think I’ve found my calling in life.”

“Not getting into any trouble, are you?” Dervish grunts.

“As if!” Bill-E smirks.

“I was discussing your situation with Dervish earlier,” Juni says hesitantly.

Uh-oh! It’s never good when an adult says something like that.

“I’m worried that you’ll fall behind in your schoolwork,” Juni goes on. “Things have been a rush lately—Dervish accepting our offer, bringing you two with him, a crazy first week of shooting. Schooling arrangements have been made for the other children, but we overlooked you and Bill-E. I think it would be a mistake to let things continue as they are and Dervish agrees, so…”

“No!” Bill-E cries dramatically. “You’re going to stick us in a class? Say it ain’t so, Derv!”

“It’s so,” Dervish laughs. “Juni’s right. We’re going to be here three months, maybe longer. If you go that length of time without lessons, it’ll mean repeating a year when we get back to Carcery Vale.”

“You won’t have to do full days,” Juni promises. “We keep classes flexible, to fit in around shooting, so it’ll be a few hours here, a few hours there, just keeping you in line with what your friends are doing back home. That doesn’t sound so awful, does it?”

“Too bad if it does,” Dervish interjects before we can reply, “because you don’t have a choice.”

“Slave-driver,” Bill-E mutters, but he’s only pretending to be grumpy. We both knew this was coming. The freedom couldn’t last forever.

Juni and Dervish start talking to each other again. Juni’s been with my uncle most times that I’ve seen him recently, which is strange since they can’t have a lot of business together. Dervish is part of the inner technical circle, whereas Juni’s job revolves around the children. There must be another reason why he’s sticking to her like superglue and I think I know what it is—good old-fashioned physical attraction!

It seems incredible. If asked a week ago, I’d have laughed and said the bald old grump didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. But something’s stirring in the hidden depths of Dervish Grady. There’s a gleam in his smile which was never there before. He’s switched to a pungent new aftershave. His clothes are freshly ironed. He’s even started combing the wisps of hair dotted around the sides of his head into place. There’s no doubt about it—he’s trying to impress the cute albino!

Juni knows that Bill-E and I are friends with Emmet, so she places us in his class. Most of the other students are actors. There’s the Kane twins, Kuk and Kik, a boy and girl, small and slender, very alike in looks. They don’t speak much to anyone, going off by themselves whenever there’s a free period. They have big roles in the film as eerie, psychic twins.

Salit Smit is the main child star of Slawter. He’s a bit older than the rest of us. A nice guy but not the brightest spark. He just smiles and nods a lot in class, not bothering to apply himself, convinced he’s going to be the biggest movie draw since Tom Cruise.

I absolutely despise the other three. A clique of snobs presided over by the dreadful Bo Kooniart, a girl who was born solely to annoy. She’s been in a few commercials and thinks she’s God’s gift. Always dresses stylishly, like a model. Sucks up to Davida and anyone else with power and influence. Ignores the rest of us, treating us like simpletons or servants.

Her brother, Abe, is almost as bad. A scrawny, miserable excuse for a child. He’s not an actor but his father—the loud, obnoxious Tump Kooniart, a movie agent—insisted he be cast if they wanted to hire Bo. From the rumours, Davida resisted, but finally caved in and gave him a small part as a kid who raises the alarm when the demons are about to break through en masse. I don’t think Davida gives way too often so Tump must be good at his job. Which is just as well, because from what I’ve seen of Bo and Abe, they’re awful at theirs!

The third mini-tyrant is Vanalee Metcalf. Her parents are multimillionaires. Too busy to waste time with their daughter on set, so she came equipped with her own bodyguard-cum-servant, who glares at anyone who doesn’t grovel at her feet.

Bo, Abe and Vanalee took one look at Bill-E and me when we were introduced to them this morning, smirked at each other in a snide, superior way and turned their noses up to let us know we weren’t worthy of direct notice.

Our tutor’s a sweet but nervous woman called Supatra Jaun. I can tell within ten minutes that she can’t handle Bo and her posse. She lets them talk to each other while she’s teaching and doesn’t ever try to assert her authority. Sometimes she’ll murmur, “Now, now, Bo, please pay attention,” but without any real hope that the blonde, pony-tailed, stick-thin brat will obey.

Miss Jaun seems genuinely pleased that Bill-E and I have been added to her class, probably because we’re polite and show some interest. She chats to us warmly, finds out what we’ve been studying, takes a few notes, promises to haul us up to scratch in next to no time.

“I bet those scruffbags know a lot about scratching,” Bo sniffs.

“Meaning?” I growl at her.

“Lice, you moron!” she screeches, and Abe and Vanalee burst out laughing.

“We’ve found our nemesis,” Bill-E mutters in my ear, pegging it dead-on. “Hate her, Grubbs. Hate her good and proper.”

“Does her character die in the script?” I ask Emmet.

“No,” he says. “She ends up saving the town, along with Salit.”