by Lucy Parker
She didn’t have to explain what she meant. Even when Lily was making an effort to set everything aside for a couple of hours, he was lurking in the back of her mind. The sudden turn in the conversation just seemed to follow on from her silent conflict.
Fortunately, there was very little chance that Trix was going to remember anything that had happened after her fourth mojito. Lily still wasn’t entirely comfortable discussing this. They both thought she was walking a dangerous line, but for different reasons. Dan St. James was well out of the picture, yet he was still managing to put a shadow of constraint between them.
When she spoke, it was more to herself than Trix. “Even if we didn’t act on it until the show closed, the press would take the story, slant it in the worst way possible, and drag it out every time I did anything newsworthy. I’ve seen it happen to Mum for years. She doesn’t care.” Lily gripped the edge of the wooden table. “I pretend I don’t care, and then I don’t show my thighs in public for four years.”
Trix looked at her unblinkingly before her gaze dropped to the water glass. “You didn’t add anything to this while I was dancing, did you?”
“Like what?”
“Like ninety proof vodka. What do your thighs have to do with anything? Not that they aren’t lovely.”
“Thank you. And never mind.”
It wasn’t just the tabloids and anonymous hate comments. It was what they fed into. In the theatre, in the studio, on a film set, everything had an impact. It wasn’t a good look if you were sleeping with your director, who cast you in your first West End show, in a role that seemed light years beyond your ability. Especially when there was a…parental precedent. Although she wasn’t shoving all the blame onto her mother. Her own over-eagerness had locked her into the contract with CTV, thus leading to the world’s worst case of typecasting.
You could get away with dating a co-star—if they were single and born in the same decade. That was good promo for the show. The bosses loved it. Until the inevitable breakup, when fans went into meltdown on social media and the backlash hit. Lily had seen it happen enough at CTV that she’d never wanted to go anywhere near another actor romantically.
Nobody was high-fived for having a fling with management.
She couldn’t help feeling that it would be the equivalent of a fling, however long it lasted. Luc had already spent eight years in a relationship that, in the end, had obviously been a poor second to his career. Did anyone think he was going to do an about-face for her sake? Just because they had enough chemistry to charge a power station and an unexpected connection. A strong connection.
It was all her lifelong deal-breakers in one man. It was like she’d made a list and the universe had laughed in her face. Nemesis had come along, called her a talentless bimbo, and made her like him.
“By the look on your face,” Trix said, shaping each word with painstaking care, “I’m guessing you don’t need your own lecture on toxic relationships.”
“You were singing Luc’s praises not long ago.” She was dancing through a minefield where he was concerned and she still felt compelled to defend him against the smallest slight.
“As a director. Not a roll in the hay that could derail years of hard work.”
A wave of exhaustion rolled over her. She rubbed at her eyes, probably smudging her mascara everywhere. It had been a bit naive to expect a change of scene to provide a magical epiphany. She’d paid ten quid for mineral water, had her arse squeezed by Dylan, and watched a load of strangers kissing under the mistletoe. Every time, her mind had helpfully produced the memory of Luc’s lips against her pulse.
“Okay.” Trix pushed out of the booth and stood on unsteady feet. “I’m seeing six angels on the top of that Christmas tree and they’re all waving at me. I have to pirouette on a high wire tomorrow night. Tonight. Whatever the time is, if I don’t sober up in the next few hours, you’re going to be spending Christmas at my bedside in Intensive Care.”
Hastily, Lily got up and grabbed her arm when she teetered. They almost made it outside without incident, but their luck ran out at the door. Dylan reappeared, even more drunk than before, and insisted on escorting them to their Uber with a lot of showy gestures for the cameras.
Lily put up an arm against the flashes, finally managed to wrest herself from Dylan’s helping hand and slid into the backseat after Trix. With her hand on the door, she looked up at him. “Thanks, Dylan. See you tomorrow.”
He smiled at her. His long hair was loose and his pupils were so dilated that his eyes looked black. “Sure, Freddy.”
“It’s Lily.”
“Whatever.”
It was dark and blessedly quiet in the taxi. When the car pulled away from the curb, Lily dropped back against the headrest.
They crawled through the traffic at an approximate speed of half a metre per hour, coming to a complete halt in the chaos near Oxford Street.
“Hey.”
Lily looked sideways at Trix.
Her friend was pale in the gloom and the lights outside were casting multi-coloured prisms on her face. She didn’t slur a single syllable when she said, “You could be overthinking this. You said it yourself. You’ll get over it. He’s just a man. You have lines to learn. Corsets to stuff your breasts into. The Spanish Armada to thwart.”
“The Spanish Armada was 1588.”
Too much detail for the number of mojitos consumed. It threw Trix off her stride.
“Sorry.” Lily leaned back and closed her eyes again. “Not important.”
“Where was I?”
“Something about stuffing my breasts into corsets.”
“You’re under a lot of stress at the moment. It could be affecting your judgement.”
That was distinctly possible.
“Maybe it’s just a crush.”
“Yeah,” Lily said softly. “Maybe.”
*
“On the bright side,” Amelia said cheerfully, removing a partially chewed pen from her mouth. “Truly horrific rehearsals usually mean a stellar opening run.”
Luc looked up from the latest script revision, where he was scrawling notes in appropriately slashing strokes of red ink. “The superstition is specific to the final dress rehearsal. It’s also a total fallacy. Truly horrific rehearsals mean actors who can’t keep their lines straight even though their scripts are two inches from their faces—and who apparently can’t tell left from right. Freddy!”
In the performance circle, Freddy stopped mangling her monologue and glanced over warily.
Silently, with his pen, Luc pointed at the opposite side of the studio. She glanced over and then down at her feet, formed an “Oh” with her mouth and went to re-enter from the currently improvised stage left.
David whistled in frustration, swung his feet off the chair in front of him and sat up. “There are currently two dozen six-year-olds around the corner doing a better job at rehearsing the Tiny Tots’ Nativity Play. The last time I saw Freddy flub an entire scene, she was eleven and had a bad case of the mumps. She’s our workhorse. Solid. Dependable.”
“While I’m sure any teenage girl would delight in being compared to a Clydesdale—” Amelia examined the remains of her pen “—it’s the first time they have to speak and move simultaneously. It’s always like watching newborn kittens work out where their legs are.” She looked at Luc. “Although considering that at least one of our highly paid professionals is sweating enough morning-after whisky fumes to anaesthetize an elephant, you’re being relatively Zen there, Captain.”
“I’m trying to keep my blood pressure somewhere south of Neptune until at least the dress rehearsals.” Flipping to the next page in the script, Luc raised his voice again. “That was your cue, Freddy.”
Freddy pushed a handful of hair behind her ear and checked her script, frowning. “But—Oh. Sorry!”
“Just pick up from the beginning of Scene Three.”
Laughter on the sidelines became smothered giggles and whispers.
�
��Quiet,” snapped one of the assistant producers, and the noise level dropped.
David grunted. “Lamprey’s doing a halfway decent job.”
Luc made another note on the script and glanced over at Lily, who was running lines in the other practise sphere with Margo and David’s assistant. Unlike Freddy, Dylan, and the rest of Group B, who were clutching their lines like kids with teddy bears, Lily and Margo were almost off-book already.
Lily was moving well, confidently conferring with Margo. She was smiling between scenes and had so far only had one momentary nose-rubbing lapse into insecurity. There were tired shadows under her eyes, however, as if she hadn’t slept well. She was wearing a black jumper and leather jacket that hugged the soft curves of her upper body and added to her pallor.
“She still sounds like she’s got a collapsed lung,” David added, before anyone could accuse him of optimism.
“Jocasta Moore will be here this afternoon.” Amelia settled her laptop on her knee to bring up the schedule. “Lily’s booked for two hours of voice training after the lunch break. One until three. Also at that time, you’re taking Freddy and Dylan through Act Two, scenes three and four, Margo’s working on the opening monologue with Luc, and Padma is overseeing the understudy read-through. All three principals in Studio A at three o’clock, so you can start blocking the confrontation scene. Luc, you’ve got a lunch meeting with the financial advisor from Weston & Crimm at noon. And wardrobe wants measurements before five.”
“Shit, what time is it now? Magalie’s got the new costume sketches for me upstairs.” David shoved back his chair and took off at a trot, dodging around Margo and Lily.
“Hey.” On the floor, Dylan broke off his scripted argument with Freddy to ad lib a few complaints of his own. He whistled at one of the interns. “You with the glasses. Shut those blinds, would you? The sun’s right in my eyes.”
The panicked-looking intern looked from the floor-to-ceiling windows and electric shutter system to the management conclave, and wavered. “Um…”
Luc tossed his script down on the table. “James, carry on with your work. Dylan, take two steps to the right. Crisis averted.”
Dylan scowled, but moved into the shadow cast by the projector screen.
“We’re breaking for lunch soon,” Amelia called. “Try to hold it together. There’s light, soup and some truly excellent scones at the end of the tunnel.”
When the noise resumed, she quirked a brow at Luc. “Reckon we could traipse around to St. Barnabas and offer them a swap for the Nativity? Give them Dylan, and we’ll take whichever kid permanently haunts the naughty step off their hands. I think we’d still come out on top.” She frowned, following the straying path of Luc’s gaze before he could look away. “Is there a problem with Margo and Lily now? I mean, other than the sense of your universe imploding as your past and future mattress buddies rub shoulders and chuckle together.”
Coffee sloshed from the cup Luc had just picked up. Swearing, he thumped it down on a piece of scrap paper and shook spilled drops from his hand. “Could you give some sort of warning before you say things like that? It would help to avoid the third-degree burns.”
“FYI, the starchy expression and tight lips are not attractive and they don’t cancel out the emoji heart eyes every time you look at her.”
He ripped open a sugar packet and poured it into the coffee.
“That was your cue to say ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ with stalactites hanging off every syllable.”
He finished the coffee before he replied. “Sorry. You don’t usually require a response when someone flips the lunacy switch.”
“Ah. So we’re just going to ignore the elephant in the room?”
“I believe it was already knocked flat by Waitely the walking distillery.”
Amelia looked over at Dylan. “He drained a bar dry last night and is managing to speak in iambic pentameter. I have two glasses of wine with dinner and I can barely decipher the TV Guide the next day. I’m so freaking old.”
“Join the club.”
She hummed in her throat. “Speaking of Dylan, I see Lily’s doing her part to dispel any totally false rumours by generating new ones.”
He exhaled loudly and set his cup down. “What?”
She turned the laptop screen in his direction. It was filled with a photo of Lily, dressed up for a night out, surrounded by a horde of photographers and Dylan Waitely’s arms.
“Apparently Lizzie and Guildford had quite an evening at the Primavera last night.” Amelia studied him, fascinated. “Got a little tic in your jaw there, maestro?”
He looked down at the screen for several more seconds. Then he turned the laptop around and picked up his script again. “Co-star hookups are inevitable.”
“Uh-huh.” Amelia circled her finger near his temple. “I think a vein just popped.”
Luc flipped to the current scene. “So, we’re going ahead with those lighting changes in the first act.”
Amelia’s eyes continued to burn a hole into his profile before she sighed. “I don’t know why I bother.”
“It’s a mystery to us all.” Luc started to flag the new directions, but after his third error, he set his jaw and let the end of the pen rest against the paper. His gaze travelled from Dylan to Lily, still at opposite ends of the room.
Amelia bent to speak close to his ear. “I like her. She seems to bring out the best in you.”
Turning the page with his left hand, Luc shook his empty cup in her direction. “Black, one sugar, thanks.”
“Not right at this moment, admittedly.” Amelia lifted the cup by the rim. “But in general—you seem… I think you’ve smiled more this week than you have in the past five years. Watching you together, it’s like a couple of leopards circling one another with their hackles on end. Then, when you expect the fur to fly, they start purring. Heads rubbing instead of butting. Making each other laugh.”
“Leopards laugh?”
“Well, I thought about using hyenas, but I don’t want to insult Lily. Her problem is more soft and breathy; she doesn’t manically cackle.”
They were now about one animal metaphor away from a full zoo.
Luc closed the script and looked at her, not feeling much like smiling. “Are you having some sort of breakdown?”
“No, but thanks for your concern.” Amelia crossed her arms, letting the handle of the coffee cup dangle from one hooked finger. “You’ve been so…shut off for a long time now.”
“Amelia—”
“It’s not that easy to find, you know. A person who makes the hard work worthwhile.”
Luc did know. It wasn’t something that had been on his mind until very recently. He hadn’t been aware that he was missing—
He couldn’t deal with this right now. And his leopard obviously had no intention of dealing with it either, since she preferred to spend her limited spare time in London nightclubs with the inhabitants of the monkey cage.
Deliberately, he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Maria, however, flipped her shit after we walked into whatever was going on in the study at Aston Park, and is about ready to have her shipped off to Siberia, so discretion, Obi Wan, discretion.”
*
“We’re breaking for lunch.” Padma, the assistant stage manager, stuck her head into the side studio where Lily and Margo had been discussing their confrontation scene. “Lily, there’s paperwork for you to sign in David’s office.”
Lily sat on what looked like an old church pew to put her boots back on. “Where—”
“Eighth floor.”
“Three doors down from Luc’s office.” Margo tied the belt on her coat and smiled at her. “If you did a private read there while he did his impression of a cyborg, I’m sure the location is emblazoned into your nightmares. Nice work this morning, by the way.”
Lily hesitated. “Thanks.”
“Look.” Margo played with the ends of her belt. “I want t
o apologise for the other night. I was a bit—thrown. The whole thing took me by surprise.”
“It’s really not—”
“It was bitchy.” Margo’s smile twisted. “Luc’s personal life is none of my business now. Blame it on ego. Even when you’ve moved on, you’d prefer to think that your ex is mostly happy but still shedding the occasional tear into his pillow. Not breaking multiple traffic laws to get to the side of a semi-drowned, twentysomething blonde.”
“Margo—”
“I’m out. I promise. Whatever is going on between the two of you is between the two of you. And probably every gossip columnist in the city with a dubious grasp of ethics.” She slung her handbag over her shoulder. “Anyway, I have a lunch date with my husband.” Her smile turned more affectionate. “It’s his birthday. He’s got a big concert at the Majestic on Christmas Eve, so we’re sneaking in a double celebration at Claridge’s.”
“Sounds great.” God, it was almost Christmas Eve already. Claridge’s reminded Lily of the visit to Kirkby and her father’s suggestion of the meal that would never eventuate. Which in turn reminded her of Luc, holding her, his body solid and warm, his arms comforting around her, his breath and his lips against her neck. The dual feeling of safety and…tingles.
Margo stopped at the door. “I just want to say—I am sorry for the things I said. At least, for the way I said them. But I stand by the warning. Just—don’t expect something from Luc that he’s not capable of.”
She had really nailed the leading lady routine of exiting with a flourish and the last word.
Trying to leave all the angst behind in the studio, Lily took the lift up to the eighth floor. The elevator was the quirkiest part of the building. The text of Shakespeare’s tragedies wrapped the wood panelling in tiny lines of gold lettering. Presumably, if it broke down somewhere between the conference rooms and the management suites, there was the immortal Hamlet bloodbath to remind you that however bad the situation might seem, it could be worse.
The doors slid open at the executive reception desk, where an administrative assistant was talking to a tall man in a suit. He thanked her, tapped his hand against the countertop and turned around.
