I Am Dust

by Louise Beech

‘As you know,’ continues Cynthia, ‘we officially open on Thursday the fifth of September.’

  Paige and Nina clap their hands wildly. Beth glances at them with distaste. Chester looks sad. Chloe wishes he was staying.

  ‘Will the media be here?’ asks Beth. ‘I know the official press night isn’t until the tenth of September, but I bet they won’t be able to wait.’

  Chloe wonders if Beth asks because she has something to hide from them? She realises now that Beth has kept well away from the film crew recently, and – unlike Chester – has avoided speaking to any journalists.

  ‘The box-office staff told me that a few journalists they know have tickets for the premiere,’ admits Cynthia. ‘If any of them harass you for stories, the same rule applies as it has for the last few months – send them to me.’

  Chester raises his eyebrows at Chloe.

  ‘I’m gonna make sure I look my best for the whole run,’ says Paige. ‘Make sure my hair’s always done and I have full make-up on. You never know which agents or producers might come.’

  ‘Doubt they’ll be interested in an usher,’ says Beth.

  Is she bitter? wonders Chloe. Could that bitterness have made her capable of murder?

  ‘They might be,’ says Nina.

  ‘Most of all,’ interrupts Cynthia. ‘Enjoy it. Be professional at all times; be helpful and happy. You’re experiencing a historical time in our theatre – in our city. It’s going to be fantastic.’ She pauses as though to let it sink in. ‘OK, the next time I see you all will be opening night. I want you in half an hour earlier than usual. See you there.’

  Chloe suddenly feels overwhelming sadness – for the fact that it’s Chester’s last day, for the fact that she won’t be here now for two weeks, for the fact that she won’t see Ginger in any way until then. She looks up and realises she’s the only one in the rehearsal room. Damn; no chance to question Beth. Maybe she’s in the box office.

  She finds Chester alone there, opening the ‘Good Luck’ card they have all signed for him.

  ‘Where’s everyone gone?’ asks Chloe.

  ‘They’re getting changed and coming back to go out for my drink thing.’ He reads the card, his eyes filling with tears. ‘Shit. I can’t believe this is it.’

  ‘Oh, Ches.’ Chloe puts a head on his shoulder. ‘This isn’t it for us. We’ll see each other all the time. And anyway…’

  ‘What?’ he asks.

  Chloe was going to say that she has a feeling she won’t be here for much longer either but doesn’t.

  ‘I have gossip,’ he says, perking up.

  ‘What now?’ she laughs.

  ‘Seriously, I do. So, I looked at the list of people who have tickets for the first night.’

  ‘Why? Must have taken you ages. That’s five hundred people.’

  ‘I was bored. The box office was empty.’

  ‘You weren’t bored,’ laughs Chloe, ‘you were up to mischief.’

  ‘Anyway, guess who’s coming that night?’

  ‘Oh, God. The Kardashians? Prince William?’

  ‘I wish.’ Chester pauses, holding her gaze with wide, dramatic eyes. ‘Clive Jacobs and Paul Thomson.’

  ‘I don’t even know who they are?’

  ‘Clive was Morgan’s boyfriend, remember? And Paul Thomson was the caretaker here. You know, the one who was questioned by the police. Why are two of the original suspects in Morgan’s death coming to see the show?’

  ‘Erm, maybe they like the theatre?’

  ‘Whatever.’ Chester waves a hand. ‘God, I wish I had a ticket for that night.’

  ‘They were both cleared, remember,’ says Chloe.

  ‘I don’t even think it’s either of them, to be honest.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. It was Harold Shipman. Charles Manson.’

  ‘I think it was Edwin Roberts,’ whispers Chester.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Chloe laughs. ‘It was a woman, anyway.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Chester frowns at her.

  Chloe realises what she has just said. ‘I … just a feeling.’

  ‘A feeling? Why? Which woman?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She tries to change the subject. ‘Maybe because of the earring.’

  ‘Anyone could nick an earring, man or woman. Could have been both.’

  ‘Both?’

  ‘A man and a woman. What if two people killed her. Your woman and a man. Maybe Clive Jacobs was let off, but he was there, except with someone else, so the evidence didn’t point to him?’

  ‘Chester, with your imagination, you should write a play.’

  ‘I might.’ He pauses. ‘How’s yours going?’

  Chloe shrugs, not wanting to talk about it. ‘I’ll see you in a bit. I’m just going to the toilets to touch up my make-up and get changed.’

  Chloe spends a few minutes fluffing her hair up and applying more mascara and lipstick. On her way to the box office, she pauses, and looks towards the backstage door.

  Chloe…

  That voice. Morgan Miller. But if it really is her, why? Why does she want Chloe? Why has she been calling her these recent months?

  Chloe…

  She heads backstage. On her way past the door that leads to the stage, she pauses. Is Morgan Miller still really here? If so, how must she feel about the new stage? About the reimagined set. Does she like it? Does she wish she had finished her run twenty years ago? Does she wish she could take part now?

  Chloe opens the door and walks through. She passes the curtain and steps out, into the Dust world. No one is here. She walks carefully into Chevalier’s drawing room, touching the soft curtains and vases of white flowers. She steps into the garden and smells the plastic climbing hydrangea, laughing at her own silliness.

  She imagines being the star.

  Esme Black.

  No. Imagine being the girl in your own show – Abigail.

  Who said that? Is it Morgan? Chloe looks up at the back of the auditorium, as if she might be there. No one. Is she just hearing things? What if Chloe could perform her own play, here on this very stage? How would that feel? But it’s no good. It needs work.

  You don’t believe that, Chloe…

  She faces the empty auditorium and whispers the final lines of her script: ‘Only the music of the ocean – wordless, melodic, soothing – and the dance of the waves, and the two of us sinking, forever, together, to the bottom of the sea.’

  What was that? Footsteps? Someone real or just a ghost?

  Chloe leaves, afraid of being caught. She loiters for a moment at Ginger’s dressing room door. Despite everything – despite her coolness, despite her abrupt dismissal at their last meeting – Chloe can’t change how she feels about her. She decides to knock and tell Ginger how stunning she was. To tell her she’s going to wow them. That she outshone even Morgan Miller; that she is Esme Black, and it’s as though she was always supposed to be. There won’t be another opportunity before opening night.

  Just as she is about to knock, Chloe hears voices.

  Ginger and Edwin Roberts. Probably chatting about the show. None of her business; she’ll come back another time. She turns to leave, but then three words stop her. Three words that Ginger says to Edwin. That Chloe recognises. That she wrote.

  She Haunts Me.

  43

  The Dean Wilson Theatre

  August 2019

  Why is Ginger talking to Edwin Roberts about her script if she didn’t like it? Is she going to laugh with him about Chloe’s lack of talent, tell him that she has audacity to write her own show? Though she fears the hurt it will cause, Chloe lingers a moment longer. She needs to hear. She puts an ear to the wood.

  ‘You mean it’s by Chloe Dee? The usher?’ Edwin is saying.

  ‘Yes.’ Ginger sounds excited.

  ‘She let you read it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ginger’s voice trails off as though she has moved further from the door. Chloe strains to listen. ‘She’s got a bit of a thing for me, the darling g
irl. We were friends at school – I told you that. We did a drama group together as kids.’

  ‘I’ve always thought her a little odd,’ says Edwin, and Chloe can picture him, hair sprouting from his head like overgrown thorn bushes, hat in hand. ‘Maybe that’s why – cos she’s a bloody writer. So, she can act, eh?’

  ‘Well, a bit. She’s not especially good.’ Tears tickle the corners of Chloe’s eyes. ‘But her writing – it’s just incredible.’

  Chloe frowns. Incredible? So Ginger did like it after all. But why did she lie in the bar? Say it was ‘quite good’ in that patronising way. It makes no sense.

  ‘Eddie, the way she writes. It’s just … exquisite. It’s like she pours her whole heart onto the page. I tell you, at times, I cried.’

  Chloe puts her forehead against the cool surface of the door to try and calm the confusion of emotions within. Ginger loves her script; she loves her words. But why did she say otherwise? To hurt her? But why? What has she ever done to deserve that?

  ‘I must read it,’ says Eddie.

  ‘But it’s hers.’ Ginger sounds conflicted. ‘I can’t share it without her permission, can I?’ She pauses, and Chloe wonders if they are looking at one another, smiling. ‘We do need to find a way.’

  ‘What do you mean? Why?’

  ‘Because I want to play the main character – Abigail,’ says Ginger.

  ‘Abigail…’ repeats Edwin, as though testing the name out.

  ‘Yes. She’d be perfect for me. She’s troubled, intense, passionate. So much to get my teeth into. And it would be a perfect follow-up to Dust. Eddie, I don’t think Chloe would let me though. I think she’ll want to play her. There’s the other female lead, Grace, but I want a big star to play her. Alongside me.’

  ‘And, darling, it doesn’t matter how good a writer Chloe is, if she’s a mediocre actress, she’ll ruin her own work.’

  Ginger remains silent, and Chloe realises that Ginger doesn’t think she is mediocre. Chloe knows – like she always knows – that Ginger is afraid of Chloe performing Abigail. She doesn’t want Edwin to see Chloe play the part. She knows that she will do it how it should be done. That she will win them over. The betrayal hurts more than any before.

  ‘I know,’ agrees Ginger. Does she even feel guilty? ‘How can we ensure the role is mine? She wrote the script. We can’t just … steal it.’ She pauses. ‘Can we?’

  Can we?

  ‘She hasn’t let anyone read it as far as I know,’ says Ginger. ‘And she hasn’t sent it anywhere either.’

  ‘There are ways.’ Edwin sounds excited too now. Chloe knows he is desperate for another hit show to continue the Dust success; she knows that the one following it has had dismal ticket sales so far. ‘Send it to me. We can tell Chloe that we need to shape it, polish it, improve it. That this is the necessary process if she wants it on the stage. Then it becomes a joint work. Then we take over a little more and her name becomes merely a credit. And then we could suggest you play the main role.’

  Silence from Ginger. Is she feeling terrible at the thought of doing something like that, or is she nodding along? ‘I think it could be even better than Dust,’ she says eventually. ‘The final scene where Abigail jumps into the ocean to be with Grace … oh, I cried my heart out…’

  Fuck you. Chloe wants to scream. Fuck you. You don’t even have a heart…

  She has heard enough. She needs to cut. She needs to bleed. Release.

  She turns and bumps into Chester.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She pushes past him and heads for the back door.

  ‘Chloe! Where are you going? Aren’t you coming for drinks? Chloe!’

  She pedals home with his cries of ‘Chloe’ tugging on her heartstrings, tears as hot as the August night on her cheeks.

  Once in her bedroom, she takes the knife from her wooden box. She has not cut for a year now. She holds it up so that it shimmers in evening sun, still spellbinding after all these years.

  Don’t do it. You’re healing. Your scars are looking good now.

  Cut, bleed, release … rage…

  Don’t do it.

  She cuts.

  But it doesn’t work.

  The hurt doesn’t trickle away with the flow of crimson. She remembers suddenly that she first started cutting when she was angry that Ryan might steal Jess from her. But Jess was never hers. Ginger isn’t hers. The script is though. The script is all she has. Many times, she has reached for it instead of the knife. She wrote scenes until her fingers throbbed and she blacked out. She lost herself in the prose to ease her turmoil. It was there when nothing else was.

  She reads the final words again.

  ‘What if I let go? What if I fall? She is there, in the water, I know she is. What if I swim and don’t look back, and swim and don’t look back? Was I ever here, on this ship? Here and yet not here. There and yet not there. If I let go, what will there be? Only the music of the ocean – wordless, melodic, soothing – and the dance of the waves, and the two of us sinking, forever, together, to the bottom of the sea.’

  She will never let anyone else say them.

  44

  Chloe’s Bedroom

  2005

  After the push incident – that was what she called it afterwards – when the two men broke into the theatre, Chloe was ill for almost two weeks.

  She fell into her bed that night and stayed there for thirteen days; it felt like an eternity. It was a tornado of fever and nightmares and hallucinations. Birds scratched under the bed. The telephone rang all night, and she had no energy to even try to silence it. Her mum fussed and brought food she could barely eat, and drinks she devoured as the August sun cooked her room. Her dad, who rarely took much notice of illness, sat quietly with her at times. At some point a doctor came. To Chloe, he was a blurred phantom, a distorted voice who prescribed more liquids and bed rest.

  Her mum put a cold flannel on her forehead, and Chloe cried; cried because she loved her and felt so lost, so sad, so ill, so hot; cried because she was afraid she was going mad. She longed to tell her mum what they had been doing that summer, but the confession stuck in her throat like dry crackers. She longed to cut her thigh again; to feel that exquisite pain followed by the rush of release; to feel alive. To cut, bleed, release … But she hadn’t the strength to reach for the dagger, let alone use it.

  To add to her misery, Chloe knew she was missing the final Macbeth rehearsals. Her mum told her a few times that Jess had rung but that she had said to stay away in case it was contagious. ‘I’m not ill,’ Chloe wanted to scream. ‘I’m haunted. I’m possessed. I’m a witch and I don’t want to be.’

  But she just cried again.

  Sometimes Morgan Miller came into the bedroom.

  She stood by the door where the sunlight didn’t quite land, reaching out for the dancing dust fragments, eternally Esme Black in her flowing white robes. It took Chloe’s breath away. She had felt her near them when they did the Ouija board, but never seen her like this. Never seen that her eyes were grey but coloured as she moved. Never seen that her hair shimmered as though electricity pulsed there. Was Chloe imagining it? She must be. Was the Ouija board making her ill so that she was hallucinating? Or was it just her?

  I am dust, whispered Morgan. When the dust settles, you will know. I am dust. When the dust settles…

  Then Chloe would fall asleep and dream about Jess: Jess in her arms; in her bed. She dreamed once of a spell that would make Jess fall in love with her, but the words flew just out of reach. Was she writing it? Or did Jess whisper it to her?

  On this Friday … so bright … the hour of Venus … blessed night … perform this rite … let her love me…

  ‘Are we going to finish it?’ Jess had asked on the bus, about the Ouija board. Were they? Should they? Now she had seen her, Chloe desperately wanted to know who had killed Morgan. They were so close. Morgan had told them the culprit was a woman who had used a Ouija boa
rd with her; a woman who took her earring. Chloe didn’t care what Ryan wanted – didn’t care about his stupid powers – but she felt if they finished the game, maybe life could return to normal – whatever that was.

  One morning, Chloe woke and waited. Waited for the nausea. Waited for the birds beneath the bed. For Morgan. For the phone. But there was just silence. Calm. Nothing. She sat up. It had passed. She was no longer hot. She still felt weak as she stood up but was surprisingly clear-headed. Strong. As though she been cleansed by the fever.

  Her mum must have heard the movement; she rushed into the bedroom. ‘You’re OK,’ she gushed, touching Chloe’s forehead and fussing. ‘I was so worried, sweetheart. I’ve never seen you so ill. You had these awful episodes. You were clawing at me and asking over and over if I could hear the birds or the phone or Morgan Miller.’

  ‘I must have been dreaming,’ said Chloe. ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Friday.’

  On this Friday … so bright … the hour of Venus … blessed night…

  Her dream? The love spell?

  ‘Which Friday?’ asked Chloe, realising something.

  ‘The twenty-sixth of August.’

  ‘No.’ Chloe looked at her calendar; at the single red word written there on that day. Macbeth. Shit. The show. It couldn’t be today. ‘But it’s the…’