Theatrical

by Maggie Harcourt

  “Me and Tommy. Really. You think that’s a thing that would ever happen? In this world or any other? You know I’ve been running all his stupid errands. Amy told me I have to keep him happy!”

  “And you’ve been doing that, have you? Keeping him happy?”

  Roly’s question is so heavy with innuendo that it practically clangs down on the desk between us.

  “What? You think…”

  Somewhere at the bottom of my bag, my phone rings. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe I left my…my shoe at home, and Mum’s ringing to ask me how I can be walking around with one bare foot. It could absolutely be that.

  I look down.

  Both shoes.

  My phone rings one…two…three times. And keeps going.

  Okay. That’s not good.

  I scrabble it out and watch as messages from Priya, Orson, Amelie, Priya again, Priya, Priya, Priya, Priya, half my class at school and – yes – Priya whizz across the screen so fast I can’t even read them.

  I guess my friends are all waking up and checking the SixGuns site.

  Oh god, oh god, oh god.

  I’m dreaming. I must be – it’s all a bad dream and all I have to do is wake up to make it go away.

  I close my eyes and try to clear my mind.

  Luke. What’s Luke going to say? What if he doesn’t say anything at all? Maybe he won’t care – I mean, he’s not said anything about me kissing his face (oh god), hasn’t asked for my number, or given me his. Maybe…

  Maybe that would be worse.

  And what if Mum sees it? How am I going to… No. That’s ridiculous. No way is Mum going to read SixGuns.

  Okay. Okay. Breathe.

  It’s just a stupid photo. A stupid, bad photo. And there’s a perfectly ordinary, innocent explanation anyway. It’s fine. It’s. All. Fine.

  I open my eyes to see Roly leaning over the sign-in book, resting her chin on her hands.

  “So…no?”

  “Obviously it’s a no!” I rub my hands over my face. Just keep breathing; say what really happened. “He came out of his hotel as I was getting off the bus. He had an umbrella. We were literally walking down the same street at the same time to the same place and he decided to be an actual human for once and save me from getting soaking wet. Maybe it was a thank you for taking care of all the sodding laundry? Maybe it was just because he felt…I don’t know, kind.”

  “Maybe he thought it would be good PR…” Roly mutters. I glare at her.

  “You don’t think he did this on purpose, do you?”

  Would he?

  Could he?

  Whatever Roly thinks, she doesn’t get to answer because George comes barrelling up the stairs.

  “Did you—” Seeing me, he stops whatever it was he was about to say. “You’ve seen it, then?”

  I nod mutely.

  “Okay. Okay.” He puts a hand on each of my shoulders. “I need you to tell me everything.”

  “George!”

  “I don’t mean like that.” He rolls his eyes. “I mean I need you to tell me what really happened so we can—”

  “What? Fix it? How do you fix this?” I wave my hand at the stage door. I wish I could fix it, but I don’t even know where to start. Not when I’m still not one hundred per cent sure what’s happening. What I am sure of, though, is what I need to do next, and it feels like I’m swallowing rocks. “I need to go find Amy.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.” Keeping his hands on my shoulders, and with my phone still going berserk, George spins me around and steers me towards the production office. As we reach the first door, he leans in and whispers from behind me: “Seriously, though. It’s not true, is it?”

  Amy is already sitting at her desk in the production office; her back to the door, her head bent over one of her folders.

  George shoves me at her and makes a break for it; a couple of seconds later, I hear the door to wardrobe slam.

  “Ummm…”

  Amy looks up – and when she sees me, her face clouds.

  This is not good. Actually, no. The being-late stuff was not good. The stuffing-up-the-cues was marginally more not-good. This is much, much worse. This is playing-hopscotchon-a-minefield levels of not-good.

  “Good morning, Hope. I think you’d better close the door, don’t you?”

  This is so very, very, very not-good, but I do it anyway and perch on the edge of the desk next to hers. She closes her folder and drops it on top of the pile to her right with one hand, opening her laptop with the other. The screen flares into life.

  “Would you like to tell me about this?”

  This is as not-good as it could possibly be.

  There, on the screen, is a series of photos. Not just that single picture that made it onto the gossip site, but five or six taken one after another, zoomed in until they start to dissolve into pixels…but nowhere near grainy enough to cause any doubt about who’s in the frame.

  “It was raining,” is all that comes out of my mouth.

  “Yes?”

  I can’t put the words together. I just can’t, it’s too ridiculous, because who – even for a second – could really believe there could be anything between me and Tommy. A hot fist of anger clenches in the pit of my stomach, raking its nails along my insides.

  “My bus was stuck in that traffic yesterday morning, so I got off at the top of the hill, outside the Grand, and Tommy was there, and he had an umbrella, and he offered to walk down to the theatre with me. So I didn’t get wet?”

  Amy studies me for what feels like for ever, her eyes moving slowly across every part of my face.

  “Okay, just let me say something. I know you don’t believe me, and I know you think I didn’t listen to your personal-professional talk, but I’m telling the truth. This is…it’s not…it’s…” I wave my hands, hoping they’ll miraculously bring me the right word. “Made-up,” I finish. It’ll do.

  And when I think this is it, this is the moment she fires me (can she fire me for this? I’ve got no idea, but she can definitely give me a bad reference…or none at all) she nods and closes the laptop with a clunk.

  “I know.”

  “You…you do?”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday, Hope – unlike the people who read this nonsense.” She waves a hand at the laptop and sighs. “Tommy’s girlfriend included.” She catches my involuntary twitch and nods. “I think we’ll need to work around Tommy for a while this morning – he’s a little…preoccupied.”

  I suppose at least this proves he didn’t set it up as a PR stunt, though.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice trembles but it doesn’t break. I won’t let it. I won’t break.

  Amy shakes her head, and then leans forward and takes hold of both my hands, folding them into hers – and that’s very nearly enough to tip me over the edge on its own.

  “You have done nothing wrong. If anything, this is my fault. I should have expected something like this might happen, especially when they started camping out at the stage door – I’m just sorry you got caught up in it. It isn’t personal – if it hadn’t been you, it would have been somebody else from the theatre. It could have been anyone. We should have anticipated photos being taken at some point.”

  I force my lips together as hard as I can, focusing on that; trying not to think about how grateful, how relieved I am that Amy not only believes I haven’t done anything stupid (not this time, anyway) but that she understands. Not that that helps me in the bigger picture – it wasn’t just anyone getting booed on their way in this morning, was it? And it isn’t just anyone who has to hope their parents don’t see this. It isn’t just anyone who has to face Luke – because he’ll be here somewhere – never mind Emery-actual-Greenway when she arrives on opening night. How would that even go? “Hi, I’m Hope – remember me? I’m the girl from the tabloids. The one they said was sleeping with your boyfriend? Welcome to the Earl’s!”

  “…naturally. The box-office phones have been ringing for the last hour, and t
he lines aren’t even open yet.”

  “Sorry?” I was so busy thinking about the terrible things Emery Greenway is going to do to me that I completely missed what Amy said.

  “I said, marketing are over the moon. We were already ninety-three per cent sold out across the run, and now they’re desperately trying to scrape together more tickets to release.”

  “What?” This time, I hear her, but it still doesn’t make a lot of sense.

  “You can’t buy coverage like this,” she says, shaking her head. “Believe me – they’ve tried. But the way things are looking this morning, we’re going to completely sell out the full run within five minutes of opening those lines, and then it’ll be returns only.”

  “Oh.”

  Right. Well. That makes it okay then, does it?

  My face must show everything that’s going through my mind, because when Amy glances up at me she smiles.

  “I know it doesn’t help, but in a day or two everyone will have realized it’s nonsense – Tommy’s people are apparently trying to get a follow-up for an interview he gave a couple of weeks ago. It’s due to go in one of the weekend papers, so he’ll clear everything up there.” She pulls a sympathetic face. “And it is good for the show.”

  “Mmm.”

  She’s right about that, at least. I’ve paid enough attention over the years to know that any publicity is good publicity when it comes to theatre.

  “So. Shall we get started?” Already moving on, Amy shuffles together a handful of folders. “We’ve got a long day to get through, and while Tommy’s dealing with –” she waves a hand in the air – “everything, Luke’s agreed to act as a stand-in for him so we can press on. We’ll run Tommy through any changes later.”

  The thought of facing Luke right now, in front of everyone and before I’ve had the chance to explain all this, makes my stomach drop again. He knows it’s all rubbish, right? Of course he does. He’ll know. How can he not?

  I follow Amy out of the production office and head for the side of the stage, glancing at the theatre model box as I pass – but the miniature stage is empty.

  Amy calls the actors together, running through the same talk as yesterday for the benefit of the cast who weren’t in before. In the middle of the knot of people, I spot Luke – or rather, the back of his head; tilted to one side as he listens, nodding occasionally – and the inside of my skin fizzes like someone’s letting off fireworks in my veins. I will him to turn around, to see me standing in the wings and to smile at me…but he doesn’t. Amy winds up, and I take a step forward as Luke nods one more time, then turns…

  He looks over and sees me and I smile, wait for his eyes to meet mine…

  And he looks right past me as though I’m not even there.

  Maybe he doesn’t see me in the darkness of the wings? That must be it. The lights are all set up for the first scene this morning and I can feel how hot they are, how bright they are, even from here.

  I take another step forward, call his name…

  He walks towards me…

  And he walks right past.

  “Luke?”

  But he’s already gone. I guess that tells me everything I need to know.

  Holding my head up high and blinking fast, I step out of the shadows and onto centre stage, hurry down the steps and make straight for the prompt desk.

  Jamie isn’t in the first scene we cover – which means I don’t have to deal with seeing him there, on the stage, almost within reach. But I still manage to miscue another lighting effect, making Rick sigh. And then there’s a problem with the grid above the stage and everything grinds to a halt for ten agonizing minutes, during which I hear my name and “in for a long wait”, followed by a hearty chuckle, drifting down from the fly-floor.

  I flick a switch on the prompt desk and shove my headset back on. “I can hear you, you know.”

  My own voice rings uncomfortably in my head, awash with feedback. It’s followed by a mumble that might just be an apology – or might not. I rip off the headset before I have time to decide which it is – I’m not in the mood.

  By the time we’re up and running again, Rick has had a chance to rearrange the entire scene in his head, leaving actors, the techs and me scrambling to catch up with the lightning speed of his hand movements as he describes the new blocking.

  We run it.

  Rick doesn’t like it.

  Of course he doesn’t.

  I rub a hole in my page trying to erase the new blocking I’d sketched out, and when I look up…there’s Luke.

  Bollocks.

  He’s standing alone in the centre of the stage and I know – I know – I’m meant to be cueing something, someone, but I can’t look away. However hard I try, somehow my gaze is pulled right back to him. It’s just like the first time I watched him stand in for Tommy in the rehearsal room. Then I thought it was talent or charisma or whatever it is that actors have when you can’t stop watching them…and maybe for everyone else, it was. Maybe to begin with it was even that for me, but not now.

  Now, it’s because I can still feel the brush of his hand against mine; the warmth of his skin, the softness of his cheek beneath my lips. I know I didn’t imagine it – not in the fog the other evening, not when he bought me a sandwich. And all I’ve been able to think about at night when I close my bedroom door and turn out the lights is how I want to run my hands through his hair the way he does, to feel it slip like silk through my fingers. I want to lean in so close to him that I can feel his heart beating against my ribs, feel the rise and fall of his breathing in my bones. I want to slide my hand around the back of his neck and pull him closer to me, closer, closer and—

  “Hope!”

  It’s so loud that I drop my pencil.

  “Sorry…”

  Rick is leaning forward in his chair, resting his folded arms on the desk. “Any time today…?”

  I flip my prompt script over to the next page and pull the mic of my headset closer to my mouth, hoping nobody else can see quite how scarlet-hot my cheeks are. “Cue elec fifty-three.”

  The lights shift; the faintest hint of colour shimmering across the stage. It makes me think of sunsets thrown against stone buildings, of late summer afternoons…

  …of walking hand in hand along the river with Luke, my head resting on his shoulder…

  And he’s right there. Almost within touching distance. Larger than life and smaller all at once. Both completely Luke and utterly not; his face, but with a stranger’s mannerisms and movements and tone of voice.

  How can he be up there, so near and so far away?

  It’s the strangest thing, because I feel like I know him – but how can I? How could I tell if he was just…acting? Because I don’t understand how, if he feels even a little the way I do, the way I thought he must when we were out in the fog, he could look at me the way he did earlier. No, not at me. Through me.

  Acting. Is it all acting? When does it stop?

  My head is still in the auditorium, still following the script, still cueing. My heart is somewhere else. My heart is at the top of the staircase leading down to the foyer. My heart is dangling by the thinnest golden thread alongside the chandelier of cages.

  My heart is falling.

  Falling, falling, falling.

  And from the top, it doesn’t look it, but it’s such a very long way down.

  Luke manages not to make eye contact with me – or even to glance in the direction of the prompt desk – through the whole scene. All four runs at it. And short of climbing on top of a nearby seat, waving my arms in the air and shouting at him, there’s nothing I can do. If this was happening in a play, it would be almost funny – you know, kind of like the bit where the couple fall out over a misunderstanding and maybe they won’t get together after all…but by the time the curtain comes down at the end of the show, everything has been made right and everyone’s with the person they’re meant to be with. But it’s not, is it? That’s all just playing, all pretending – o
nce they’ve taken their curtain calls, the loving couple let go of one another’s hands and walk off in different directions to wipe off the make-up and the declarations of undying love.

  He seemed to like me…but what do I know?

  And then he’s gone. The stage is empty.

  Rick and Nina beam, nodding and adding notes to their scripts, and a seat behind me creaks as someone shifts their weight.

  “He’s not bad at all, is he?” says Tommy. “I’m going to have to watch out for him.”

  It no longer surprises me when people appear from nowhere around here.

  “How do you mean?”

  “He’s ambitious, too, from what I hear. One day, I might be standing at the top of the stairs and feel a hand in the middle of my back and…” He mimes falling. “Can’t go on with a broken leg now, can I?”

  “You’re being a dick.”

  “My, aren’t we snappy this morning? And to think, we were getting along so well.”

  “That was before…” I close my eyes and clench my jaw. There’s no use getting into a fight with Tommy about this, is there? Much as I’d love to be able to blame him, it wasn’t actually his fault.

  “Well, I’m sure it’ll make you feel better that Emery has practically chewed my ear off about the whole thing – and she sounded just a little too happy to be able to tell me I didn’t get the award nomination I was after this year either, so no doubt that will brighten your day.” He curls his fingers in over his palm and studies his fingernails, and I almost feel sorry for him…but I recognize that voice. He’s being “Tommy Knight”. Like the last piece of a jigsaw slotting into place, the last tumbler in the dial of a safe’s door dropping into sequence, I get it. I get him. And I can see right through him.

  I flip over a couple of pages of the prompt book and draw a series of small and completely unnecessary circles in an empty space on one of the pages. Anything to look like I’m not paying too much attention to him. “Sorry about the nomination. That was the big TV drama last year, right?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see him watching me but pretending he’s not. He flicks his hair back – forgetting it’s short now, so all he’s doing is tossing his head around like a demented horse…and little by little, the facade cracks. The mask slips, and sitting there is the same man – more or less – who offered me an umbrella in the rain. Just a guy whose girlfriend is pissed off with him and who’s disappointed something at work didn’t go the way he was hoping. Work he’d put his heart and soul into, all because it’s what he loves to do, and because he can never outrun his name.