When she left drama school, her new agent, who met her sitting on a yoga block and ran briskly through her impressive client list, said she wouldn’t put her up for commercials unless she really wanted to.

And if you do, said her new agent, then they’ll only be for Europe. We wouldn’t want you to be seen over here.

They both laughed at that. Ha ha. That was when she used to go up for three movies a week. When the casting directors made sure you never crossed paths with anyone else up for the same part. When you waited in hushed anterooms clutching your script, a racehorse, primed and ready. When the director leapt up as you entered the room, holding out his hand (always his, never hers). Thanks so much for coming in.

The Polaroid clicks and whirs.

“Thanks,” the young woman says, waving the photograph dry. “Take a seat.”

Lissa does not sit. Instead, she makes her way down the line to the small bathroom to check her face. In the mirror she sees that her mascara has run and little black dots mark her under-eye. Fuck. She rubs at them with her thumb. No matter how good you feel. No matter how well you think you have pulled together an outfit, put your game face on, something always occurs to prick it.

You’ve just got to play the game, Lissa, her first agent’s assistant had sighed down the phone to her once, when she had refused to buy a Wonderbra for an audition. You know that. They said they wanted someone with bigger boobs. The Wonderbra had been cited in the phone call in which the agent dropped her.

She makes her way back out to the waiting room, threads past the legs of the waiting actors, takes a seat, and closes her eyes.

She has tried.

As time has passed, as her twenties have given way to her thirties with little to show for them, she has really tried to play the game. Has bumped down through three agents, each further down the food chain than the last. Has gone from never having commercial castings to having nothing else. From being protected from the scent of desperation to being sure that she gives it off, sweating from her pores at castings, at parties, in the street.

Please. Give me a job. Any job. Please, please, please.

Like that show her mother used to watch in the eighties. Gis a job. Gis a job.

“Lissa. Rod. Daniel.”

She snaps open her eyes. The casting director is back. It is her turn. She makes her way into the darkened box where two men sit on a sofa, scrolling idly through their phones. The air is stale, the table before them littered with coffee cups and half-eaten sushi and e-cigarettes. Neither of the men looks up from their screens.