I've caught wind of a whispered rumor circulating through London's elite art circles about an extraordinary piece on the market—a weathered, seemingly unremarkable panel painting that dealers have dismissed as a worthless imitation. But with my grandmother's intuition for authenticity and my own prescient knowledge, I recognise the telltale brushstrokes of the master himself. This neglected treasure is none other than the Salvator Mundi, Leonardo da Vinci's haunting portrayal of Christ with his crystalline orb, those eyes that follow you across centuries. Currently languishing in some collector's dusty portfolio as a "damaged copy," this overlooked masterpiece will one day command hundreds of millions. I shall offer 10,000 pounds immediately, before anyone else glimpses what I see in those cracked layers of Renaissance genius.
I leveraged Great-Uncle Larry's connections to the Christie's director and arranged a private viewing with the painting's current owner—a ruddy-faced earl with gambling debts who inherited the piece in a crumbling country estate. He welcomed me into his Belgravia townhouse, where the supposed "copy" hung carelessly in a shadowy alcove beside hunting trophies. When I approached it, Christ's eyes seemed to follow me across the Persian carpet. The earl's tweed jacket reeked of cigars as he leaned in, confiding that several dealers had already dismissed it as "worthless rubbish." I feigned casual interest while my heart raced, carefully masking my excitement as I offered to take the "decorative curiosity" off his hands immediately.
His eyebrows arched high on his forehead, and he glanced from me to the painting and back again, as if trying to see what I could possibly find valuable in the dusty canvas. I traced my finger along the edge of the frame, careful not to appear too eager. "Something about the eyes intrigues me," I murmured, pulling my checkbook from my handbag. "Would ten thousand pounds be agreeable?" His pen scratched frantically across the bill of sale before I'd even finished writing the check, a thin smile spreading beneath his mustache. The next morning's Financial Times would remain folded on his breakfast table, the headline about Christie's hunt for the lost Leonardo still unread.
The phone rang on a Tuesday afternoon while Rose was brewing a mug of Earl Grey, the scent of bergamot curling around her like a comfort. She expected the caller to be her agent, Richard Lovett, or perhaps her mother, out of concern for her daughter's mounting fatigue. Instead, it was a casting director from Paramount, whose brisk, efficient voice betrayed the urgency of his mission. He congratulated her on the recent round of films, then cut quickly to the chase: Would she be interested in auditioning for the role of Young Jenny Curran in the upcoming film adaptation? "It's a smaller part," he warned, "not the sort of top billing you deserve, but the role is pivotal, formative to the entire narrative." There was a pause, the kind that begged for instant assent.
Rose considered the offer, letting the words roll around her mind like marbles. She had never been compelled by the idea of playing "younger" versions of other actresses—her particular bone structure and the breadth of her gaze had always set her apart, made her singular, or so the magazines said. But the challenge was precisely what intrigued her: to distill all the nuance of a character's future self into a handful of scenes, to echo another woman's heartbreak and hope in the span of fifteen minutes of screen time. Was it a demotion, or a dare? She took a measured breath, then answered with her usual poise: "I'd be very interested in reading for the role." The casting director exhaled relief, as if he'd just clinched a crucial deal, and hung up amid promises to send over the sides by evening.
The script arrived in her inbox before she had even finished her tea. Rose read it in one sitting, drawn into the tender and unsparing way the story treated "Young Jenny." There was no melodrama, no manufactured innocence—just a sense of desperation masked by bravado, a girl running hard from the childhood she knew. It was bracing and raw, and Rose recognized something of her own restless ambition in the character. She emailed a quick note to Richard: Landed Young Jenny. Short arc, but think it's worth it. Will call later.
Within minutes the phone buzzed. "You landed the Jenny job?!" Richard's voice was bright and electric, full of that West Coast buoyancy Rose sometimes missed in London. "That's a coup! You know how many scripts I get where you're cast as the ingénue in someone else's shadow? But this one's different—there's actual substance. You're going to redefine 'the young version' for an entire generation."