Last Days Read Online Free PDF Page B

all still single in their early thirties without having produced a single child between them. This life : it had weeded them out. Finger Mouse had never been in a relationship; Dan had one at film school, but still refused to talk about it; Kyle had racked up five, but they had gone down in flames before any of them reached six calendar months. Even more debilitating than his romantic shortcomings and debts, the recent probability of not making films any more had left Kyle’s sense of the future unequivocally cold, empty and terrifying. But that unbreathable space, the anti-matter of fidgeting anxiety, vanished the moment Max made the offer, because without a film on the go, he had nothing. ‘Dan, you in or what?’
    ‘Wait. Wait. I’m thinking . . . how we shoot it.’
    ‘Lot of real time here.’
    ‘That’s what I was afraid of.’
    ‘We have total creative control though. And you know how I feel about fast cutting. Fuck that shit. Why does 33
    ADAM NEVILL
    everything have to be so fast? Sound bites that you forget in two seconds because the scene has already changed nine times. We can slow things down. Get the decent content. Not one or two sentences. It’s no action film. We’re freed of all that, like it’s our own project that someone else is paying for.
    We can shoot the interviews from two cameras and then cut between two viewpoints in the edit. Throw in some reversals and close-ups for Finger Mouse so he doesn’t get bored.’
    ‘So, no pitching, no scouting, no schedule to write, no meetings, no bullshit and no hassle. It’s just all there on a plate, like some gift? An inheritance? A lottery win? I won’t be happy with you at all if this is a joke, mate.’
    ‘It’s straight up.’
    ‘Too good to be true?’
    ‘I can smell a turd, mate. This smells legit.’
    There was a long silence from Dan. ‘When do we start?’
    ‘Saturday.’
    ‘Saturday?’
    ‘This Saturday.’
    ‘This Saturday!’
    34
    THREE
    From Maximillian Solomon’s production notes:
    The original headquarters of The Last Gathering has become available for rental and is between tenants. I’ve secured permission to film inside.
    Exterior and interior footage is, I would say, essential to our project. One of the original members of The Last Gathering will meet you
    at the address below, and provide an interview about life in the very heart of where it all began in 1967. Her name is Susan White, aka Sister
    Isis [see biography section]. We have the 11th and 12th of June to record this segment.
    clarendon road, holland park,
    london. 11 june 2011. noon.
    ‘This was ours with the red door. It wasn’t red back then.
    They’ve painted it.’ Speaking as the first of her small feet touched the pavement, Susan White jabbed a thin hand at the three storeys of elegant Georgian stone. Her Hackney cab 35
    ADAM NEVILL
    shuddered away from the kerb, its black carapace gleamed in the dull aluminium light of the overcast sky.
    Kyle returned his attention to the spectacle of mad white hair atop a hunched body that was Susan White. She hurled an immediate impression of absurdity at the onlooker. Clown .
    The word popped into Kyle’s head. His smile was determined to become laughter. He avoided Dan’s eyes, whose surprise also boiled towards laughter. Dan turned his broad back away and began a pretence of adjusting the camera. If they exchanged just one glance, they would lose it.
    Green eyeshadow had been applied in an operatic fashion and an absence of lips enforced a painting-on of a red mouth.
    Under the wild snowy hair, a pale scalp was too visible. She’d clearly made an effort for her confession, with an outfit that hit that curious middle ground between high fashion and rag-market bad taste that only a trained eye could determine the difference between. Sunlight through the vast canopy of the trees made shadows dapple and piebald her amethyst dress.
    A turquoise shawl rustled about meagre shoulders to complete the ensemble.
    But for a