by Katy Cannon
I looked like I cared, but not like I’d tried too hard. Hopefully.
Connor was waiting for me at the ticket machine and held up two tickets as I approached. “Ready?”
“Absolutely.” I took my ticket from him to get through the barrier, then stuffed it in my pocket.
We only lived twenty minutes out of London, so by the time we’d talked about what we were looking for at the theatre, we were practically there. We got off at Waterloo, then took the tube down to Oval and walked to our destination.
The costume-hire place was incredible. I’d spent so long searching through rails of clothing at school, I’d thought this would be one more day doing the same. But the costumes here were so much … more. Costumes from every production the National Theatre had ever put on, costumes that had been worn by real actors, in real plays. Suddenly I wanted to try them all on, and see how they felt.
The costumes were organized by period, which made things easier. The costume-hire assistant led us to the right time zone, so to speak, and then left us to figure out what we needed.
“What about this?” Connor asked, holding up a green military jacket.
“Looks good,” I agreed. “But let’s see what else there is, too.” I frowned, flicking through different uniforms from different armies. “We need slightly different ones for Don John and his guys.” The bad guys couldn’t look exactly the same as our heroes, after all. “And it would be good if we could find one with lots of medals or stripes for Don Pedro, to show that he’s the prince, or leader. Do you think?”
“Absolutely,” Connor said. Then he grinned. “You know, I can’t believe I ever thought you weren’t taking this seriously.”
I ducked behind a rail to look through more costumes, without answering. Because, the truth was, I hadn’t taken it seriously. Not to start with. Without Miss Cotterill and Izzy, we probably still wouldn’t have any costumes at all.
It took us a while, but eventually we had a set of costumes we were both happy with, and that hinted at the order of power and which side people were on, without being too obvious. It all came in just under budget, too, which was a huge relief.
We filled in the paperwork to reserve them, and took the details down so Mr Hughes could confirm, pay and then pick them up, nearer to the show.
“Can you believe it’s only two weeks away now?” I asked, as we stepped back out into the grey London day.
“Think we’ll be ready?” Connor asked.
“Of course we will!” He raised his eyebrows at my certainty. “Well, I’m not saying the last couple of weeks might not be a bit fraught…”
He laughed and bumped his shoulder against mine. “We’ll be fine.”
“Yeah.” There was a warmth in Connor’s eyes that made me want to kiss him, just because. Smiling, I rose up on my toes, and Connor’s hand came to rest at the small of my back, and…
And then my phone rang.
Connor looked away and, the moment gone, I fumbled in my bag to find the phone. It was Jasper, of course, and I knew he’d just keep calling if I didn’t answer.
“Hey, what is it?” I asked, knowing I sounded impatient and not really caring.
“OK, so, it would really help me if you didn’t take this as an opportunity to say ‘Jasper, you’re an idiot’,” Jasper said, the words coming fast and frantic.
“I make no promises.”
Connor was mooching along beside me, taking in the traffic, the buildings – and totally eavesdropping on my conversation.
“Fine. So, I was hanging out with Izzy at her house, right?”
“Right.” I had a feeling I knew where this was going.
“And she, um, well…”
“She kissed you?” I guessed.
“Yes!” There was panic in Jasper’s voice now. “I thought we were just friends!”
I sighed. “OK, so what did you do? Wait, if this happened at Izzy’s house, where are you now?”
“I kind of … left.”
“Jasper…” Such a boy.
“I know! I know. But it was awful,” he whined.
“Kissing Izzy?”
“Well, no. Not that part. But then I started thinking about Ella, and I kind of pushed Izzy away…”
“And you ran out on her!” That made sense. In a twisted, Jasper sort of way.
“Yeah.”
“And called me.”
“Yeah. Can I come hang out at yours for a bit? She won’t find me there.”
“Trust me, Jasper, she isn’t going to be looking for you. Because you are an idiot.”
He sighed down the phone. “I know. But… I could actually do with talking to you about it all. Figure out what I do next.”
“Buy her flowers,” I suggested. “All of the flowers.” I rubbed my forehead and tried to think of something more helpful. Jasper was still my friend, even if he was a complete incompetent at romance. “Look, I’m in London today sorting out costume hire. Why don’t you give Lottie or Yasmin a call? I’m sure they’d love to do tea, cake and relationship analysis with you.”
“Yeah, OK. I guess.” He sounded more down than I’d thought he’d be. Normally, he was perfectly happy to go to Lottie or Yasmin with his girl issues. Probably because they tended to be a lot more sympathetic than me.
“I’ll call you when I get home, though,” I said.
“That would be good. Talk later.” He hung up.
“Everything OK?” Connor asked from beside me.
I shrugged. “It will be, I’m sure. Just Jasper having girl issues. So, what do you want to do next?”
I wasn’t sure what I expected him to say, or even what I wanted him to say. We’d sorted the costumes, we’d looked at props while we were there. This was now officially first date territory.
“How about we head up to the South Bank,” Connor suggested. “We can grab some lunch.”
I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. “Sounds good.”
The South Bank was packed as usual, despite it being a bitterly cold Saturday in February. We walked past the London Eye, turning slowly against the grey sky, and then up past the National Theatre.
“Kind of hard to believe that Ash and the others will be wearing costumes that were actually used on that stage,” I said, as we looked up at it. The building itself was nothing special, but inside… “Have you ever been?”
Connor nodded. “My dad took me a couple of times. It wasn’t really his thing, but he tried to make sure we did some stuff, just the two of us.”
“You must miss him a lot.” How hard must it have been for him, to be thrown out of his own home, to have his family move so far away. And then to have to start a new school, too… No wonder he’d been kind of moody with me last term.
“Yeah. He’s asked me to go out and visit in the summer, though.”
“To New York? Wow.”
“Yeah. I said I’d think about it. If I don’t get the job at the theatre…” He flashed me a smile that let me know he didn’t want to dwell on it. “Come on. I’m starving.”
We found a coffee shop further along the South Bank that served hot sandwiches, and sat in the window while we waited, watching the whole of London walk past us.
Including one very pretty blonde girl, about our age, who stopped just outside, and stared in.
“Damn.” Connor ducked his head, letting his sandy hair fall in front of his eyes, and grabbed my hand to turn me away from the window.
“You OK?” I asked, staring back over my shoulder at the girl. Her eyes widened, then she waved in at us.
“Fine,” Connor said, but since he was still staring at his feet it was clearly a lie. “Just don’t look at her.”
“Why?” I asked, but Connor didn’t respond. After a moment, I glanced back again, just in time to see the girl walking off.
“She’s gone,” I told him. Connor’s whole body relaxed at the news – I could actually see his shoulders drop as he let out a long breath.
“Good. Oh,
look, here comes our lunch.” He motioned towards the approaching waitress, then turned back to sit at the counter, staring out of the window again, as if nothing had happened. As if he expected me to ignore the incredible weirdness of the last few minutes.
Um, no.
I waited until the waitress had left, watching Connor as he focused in on his sandwich, before speaking.
“Are you planning on explaining to me what just happened?” I asked.
With a sigh, Connor put down his sandwich. “It’s really not something I want to talk about.”
“Fine, but you could at least tell me why I just had to hide from a girl I’ve never met.”
“Or not.” Connor took another bite of his sandwich, then wrapped the rest up in his napkin. “Come on. We can eat these on the way to the station.”
I blinked. That was it? Our date was over without me even getting to finish my lunch? No way.
I followed him outside, sandwich in hand, but stopped by the door.
“Station’s this way,” Connor said, turning back when he realized I wasn’t walking with him.
I shrugged. “It’s a nice day. I’m going to spend it here in London, away from your bitterness and sulking.”
Connor scowled. “I am not—” I raised my eyebrows and he sighed. “Yeah, OK. Sorry. Just thinking about Kirsty puts me in a bad mood these days.”
Kirsty. At least I had a name, now. “But she didn’t always?” I guessed.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“What do you think?”
He sighed again. I figured that meant he’d got the point.
“Come on,” I said, slipping my arm through his. “Let’s find somewhere to eat these. And talk.”
We found a bench looking over the Thames a little way along, and sat staring out over the water at the boats and people and birds, eating our sandwiches. Then, when we were finished, Connor took the wrappers and put them in the bin. And when he sat back down, he was just a little bit closer, his thigh pressed against mine. I shivered, more from his nearness than the cold, and he reached out and put an arm around my shoulders, holding me close.
It was almost a perfect date moment. Except…
“So, Kirsty?” I asked.
“You are relentless.”
“It’s part of my charm.”
“Trust me, princess, you have far superior charms.”
The nickname didn’t sound like an insult any more. More like an endearment, maybe. Whatever it was, something about the way he said it made me feel warmer inside. And almost made me wish I hadn’t asked about his probable ex-girlfriend.
But it was too late now.
“I knew Kirsty from the youth theatre,” Connor said. “She was in my school, but a couple of years below me. But that kind of thing didn’t matter so much at the theatre.”
“You guys dated?” I guessed.
“For a while.”
“Until…” It was like pulling teeth.
Connor sighed. “OK, fine. Here’s the story. I had a ridiculous crush on Kirsty. Even though I knew she was always at the centre of everything, always at the side of whichever boy was getting into fights, or whichever girl was crying backstage. She lived for the drama, for people to be watching her, but it took me a while to realize that. I thought she was something more than just the popular girl with blonde hair. We talked. She told me about her family, her dreams. She listened to me when I told her the same. I thought she was…” He shook his head. “I thought she was something she wasn’t. That she was special.”
My sandwich felt very heavy in my stomach. Was this why he’d taken such an instant dislike to me last term? Not just because he thought I’d be bad for the play, but because he thought I was another blonde, popular girl, just like Kirsty?
And, even more worryingly, was I?
“What happened?” I asked, even though I wasn’t completely sure I wanted to hear the answer.
“We dated. I thought it was the real thing. I … I guess I was in love, for the first time, and I thought it would be… Anyway. It turned out that she was more interested in getting to know my best friend, who was playing the lead in our play that season.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. She used me to get what she wanted. She cheated on me and then, when I found out, she made it all about her trauma. She’d be in tears at rehearsals, with a gang of other cast members around her, all glaring at me for making things hard for her. She told some story about how we both knew we were better as friends, that I was more like a brother to her, that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but it was still so hard… And everyone believed her. Even though it was me who’d had my heart ripped out and stomped on.”
I squeezed his hand a little tighter. “I’m so sorry.”
“So, all of this was going on and I was somehow at the centre of all this drama … and there was already so much of that at home, with my parents’ divorce, then them both getting remarried, then dad deciding to move … it was drama all the time, and the only thing I wanted was to be left alone to figure it out.” He stared down at his lap, and I reached up to take his hand where it lay against my shoulder. “I just wanted the theatre to be a place that I could be myself, without having to act.”
I gave him a small smile. “You realize most people go there for the opposite reason?”
He laughed, short and sharp. “Yeah. I guess they do.”
“So, what happened next? With Kirsty, I mean?”
“The usual. It was just one more Drama Club drama. And it made me feel so…”
“Manipulated?” I guessed. I knew exactly the sort of dramas he was talking about – I’d been in the middle of plenty of them before last year. But I knew about real problems now, and real friends – the ones who were there all the time, not just when things were going wrong.
“Stupid,” Connor said. “I was an idiot for not seeing what she was like sooner.”
I looked over at our interlaced fingers as I tried to think of a delicate way to ask this question. There wasn’t one, so I just asked it anyway.
“Is that why you hated me so much when we first met? Not because you thought I was a diva but … because I reminded you of her?”
“Perhaps. I think…” Connor winced. “Well, that first day, I was in a bad mood to start with. And then I saw you throwing your strop, and I could just tell you were one of those girls. A girl who wanted the drama. And in my head that meant you were someone like Kirsty. Someone who’d use anything and anyone to get what they wanted.”
“And that’s what you thought I was doing when I offered to do the costumes.”
He looked up and gave me a half smile. “Was I right?”
I glanced away again. “Maybe. To start with. I mean, it got me the opportunity to audition for the understudy role.”
“And now?”
“Now I want these costumes to be the best I can possibly come up with.” All true. I just hadn’t completely given up on the idea of Violet dropping out at the last moment, either.
“Yeah, I know.” The smile he gave me felt warmer, more real than any I’d seen before. And it felt like it was just for me. That no one else in the whole world had earned a smile like that from Connor.
“You’re a lot more than I ever gave you credit for, princess.”
“You should have been paying more attention, then,” I said, remembering the conversation we’d had in his kitchen, before Christmas. The words came out soft, but it didn’t matter, because he was only a matter of centimetres away anyway.
“Trust me. You’re all I’m paying attention to now. Everything else … it’s just unnecessary drama.” He rested his forehead against mine, so close now I could barely breathe. “All I want to think about is this.”
I don’t know if he kissed me or I kissed him, we were so in sync, my eyes fluttering closed as our lips touched.
It wasn’t our first kiss, but somehow it felt like it was. It felt special. Maybe because it was the first time
a boy had kissed me and I’d known, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he was kissing me, Grace, and not just “the popular girl” or “the best looking girl in the year” or “the star of the show”. Connor didn’t care about any of that.
Which meant he cared about me. Just me.
And that felt incredible.
That evening, after dinner, I disappeared to my room again as normal. Only, this time, I came back to the kitchen a few minutes later. Mum looked up in surprise as I entered, my arms full of fabric and Gran’s old sewing box. Faith just smiled, though, like she’d known it was only a matter of time.
“That skirt turned out great,” she said, as I sat down at the table. “What’s your next project?”
I took a breath before I answered. It was a simple enough question, but somehow the wait for my response seemed loaded with tension – as if I might yell or snipe or complain.
Listening to Connor talk about his issues over the last year had made one thing very clear to me. This was my family drama, yes. Which meant it was up to me how I dealt with it. True, I was still mad and confused about everything, but Connor was right – being at the centre of a drama was exhausting. And I had other things in my life I wanted to focus on.
Faith had made the effort to come to my school. So maybe now it was my turn. I’d try taking a page out of Connor’s book for a change and just go with it. Just this once.
“A friend of mine has a new baby sister,” I explained, showing Faith the pattern I’d printed out from the internet. I’d found the fabrics in my trawls through the charity shops and the remnants basket at the posh craft shop in town. “I thought I’d make her a little baby blanket.”
