by Julia Gray
It was a quarter to midnight; I was attending something I’d scorned so easily for most of my teenage life. A sleepover. Some film about witches flickered on Bel’s laptop, whose screen had a disfiguring spider-web crack. Unfinished tubs of Häagen-Dazs oozed a sugary dribble onto the cover of Bel’s bed; a bottle of Amaretto, taken from the downstairs drinks cabinet, was lodged between us. We had lit candles around the room, just as Evie and Petra might have done. It was exactly the kind of scene I’d have had no patience for, once upon a time.
‘Truths it shall be,’ said Azia. ‘Let’s start with Nora.’
‘I don’t want to go first,’ I said.
‘But we know the least about you,’ said Bel.
‘That’s not true,’ I protested.
‘Go on,’ said Azia.
‘OK,’ I said, drawing a fingertip down the ridge of my nose.
Bel leaned forwards. ‘What is the worst thing you’ve ever done to someone?’ she said.
I wondered if this was an invitation to tell them about Jonah Trace. Too bad; I wasn’t going to recount it. I told them instead about Toby Lenôtre and the Ruined Rainbow.
‘Not good enough,’ said Bel at once.
‘It’s true,’ I said mildly.
‘Perhaps, but it can’t be the worst thing that you’ve ever done.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Fine. I’ll tell you another story.’
One had just occurred to me; one I thought would show me in a less severe light.
I told them the story of Rita Ellory.
Rita was the Brown Owl, the woman in charge of the troupe of Brownies Evie forced me to join a few years after we moved to England. Brownies had been a significant part of her own childhood, and she had a fixed notion that I would enjoy it if I participated for long enough. Though still in her vault of sadness, she managed in one of her more lucid periods to find a pack that met in a community centre not far from where we lived. The wooden floor sported a fairy ring made of hideous polystyrene toadstools. I was a Sprite. My Sixer was called Zoe; she had a pointed, bossy face, like a pecking chicken. I didn’t like her much. But I reserved my actual hatred for Rita Ellory, Brown Owl.
Rita was not a woman who liked children; what she was doing, running a Brownie pack, was not obvious at the time. My theory now is that she was waiting to sniff out a husband: some put-upon father, longing for a release; a rich divorcé with a nice car. The first thing she did was to challenge the reading record I submitted to go with my Booklover badge.
‘You can’t possibly have read all these books,’ she sneered.
Toby Lenôtre, shrill as a burglar alarm, wailed, all the way from Paris: ‘You have stolen my name. Thief!’
My face, of course, betrayed nothing. She was similarly dismissive to other girls, which somewhat defeated the ethos of Brownies as a whole. The other thing Rita Ellory did was pick on us – any and all of us – about our looks, our bodies, and she did this in a curious way. It would sound almost affectionate at first, the way a fond if misguided grandmother might speak. But everything she said had a hidden thorn: a barb that sank in deep and took hold, and might only be found much later.
‘Ah, look at your little legs,’ she’d say to some diminutive Elf. ‘Look at you, running along on your fat little legs. This little piggy went to market; this little piggy stayed home.’
She’d give a piglike snort, and play around with the phrasing, waiting to see if she got a reaction. Rita Ellory was adept at looking for weaknesses, for gaps in our girlish defences. I was always glad she never knew that my father was dead (she wasn’t interested in absent fathers, who couldn’t be flirted with). But she could take the piss just enough out of a regional accent to cause its owner to say little, in shame; she faked concern for eczema and bitten nails; she had a range of remarks about braces. And she had a field day with my birthmark. She was always looking for interesting things to compare it to, and since she was not an imaginative woman, this process was dull, as well as painful. My policy was to not respond in any way to her comments and this, over time, made her comments more outrageous.
‘Has anyone ever told you it looks like a tea stain?’ she finally said, as we were getting ready to recite the Oh Lord Our God bit, before we went home.
I glanced towards the door, where the mothers and nannies would soon be appearing. I looked for Evie. There she was, uncharacteristically wearing a velour tracksuit in a shade of piercing blue. It was possible that Rita Ellory had not seen her.
‘I’m sorry?’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear you.’
‘Your face,’ said Rita more loudly. ‘It looks like someone has dumped a leaking PG Tips tea bag over your eye, doesn’t it?’
I counted on Evie to catch what Brown Owl was saying. As it happened, Evie couldn’t; she was too far away and too deaf, although she told me afterwards that the expression on Rita Ellory’s face was enough to convince her that something was not right. But another mother, with hearing less impaired by a decade in Goth clubs, did hear her, and reported her words at once to Evie. Evie sailed in, as stately as ever despite the velour tracksuit. She seized me by the hand, denounced Rita Ellory with a foul-mouthed tirade, and stalked out again, dragging me behind her. I never went to Brownies again, and I did not miss it.
But that was not the end of the story. As far as I was concerned, Rita Ellory had not been punished at all.
‘So what did you do?’ said Bel, with her hungry look.
‘I made a list of things I knew about her,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t much. She wasn’t married. She lived somewhere near Imperial Wharf. I didn’t know her address. But I did have her phone number. I copied it into my notebook, and I kept it.’
‘And?’ said Azia.
‘I kept the notebook in the back of a drawer. And I waited.’
‘How long?’
‘I waited for five years,’ I said. ‘Just waiting, and thinking. I needed to come up with the right thing. I wanted some time to elapse. So, finally, I guess quite a few years ago now, I had about a hundred cheap business cards made. You know the ones; you can do it on machines, in shops or at service stations. I uploaded a picture.’
Bel uttered a peal of laughter, guessing. ‘No,’ she said.
‘What did you put on the cards?’ said Azia.
‘I don’t remember exactly. Something like this: BUSTY, MATURE BLONDE OFFERING MASSAGE AND MORE. CALL RITA ANY TIME NIGHT OR DAY,’ I said, remembering perfectly. ‘And her phone number, of course.’
Azia was smiling and shaking her head. ‘Five years,’ she said. ‘Her number might have changed.’
‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘I checked that. I called her, once, and hung up. Just to be sure.’
‘You thought of everything,’ said Bel, with manifest glee.
‘I stuck the cards up in phone booths, all around London,’ I said. ‘It took me a couple of weekends to really spread them around. I guess a lot of them would have been taken down … but I just hoped she got called enough times to really disturb her. She so much liked disturbing other people. Those are always the types that can’t take it themselves.’
Bel lit a rare cigarette, as though tired out by the excitement of listening.
‘I can’t believe you waited five years,’ said Azia again. ‘I will never get on the wrong side of you, Nora.’
I smiled at her, modest. We may not have been playing dares, but I dared them, nonetheless, not to believe me.
‘Your turn,’ I said. ‘Bel. Go on.’
Pouring herself another glass of Amaretto, Bel appeared deep in thought. ‘I guess I really did wreck the set of Teen Spirits,’ she said.
She told us the story. It involved a stolen security pass, paint, bags of flour and a hose that was left on overnight, long after the revelling cast had gone home. Azia and I listened in silence.
Then Azia said: ‘Does your dad know all this?’
‘Sort of,’ Bel said ruefully. ‘I’ve always said it wasn’t my idea. But, well, you know. There was absinthe involved.�
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‘But why did you do it?’
‘Oh, I was just pissed off with everyone. The director mostly. He kept asking for script changes. One afternoon they cut all my best lines. I saw red. And then I saw a whole lot of other colours.’
The following morning, Azia and I went to the tube station together.
‘You know last night, when we played Truths,’ said Azia.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘What Bel said. It wasn’t the whole story, you know. It wasn’t just that they cut her lines. It was what the director did afterwards. She went for a drink with him, to discuss her part, she thought. He was married, in his forties. I forget his name. Anyway, he tried it on. I think he even put his hand under her top, or something. She was furious.’
‘I see,’ I said. I thought about Ken Harmon and Phyllis Lane on the set of Jacaranda. Clearly, Bel and her mother differed from me in the way in which they enacted revenge. ‘I wonder why she didn’t say so.’
Azia shrugged. ‘People don’t always tell you everything. Even in a game of Truths. In fact, I wouldn’t call that the worst thing that Bel’s ever done. She’s done so much worse than that. The funny thing is I’m not sure if she’d remember it like that. I almost wanted to start the game again, just to ask her. I’ve known Bel for thirteen, fourteen years, and sometimes I still feel like I’m figuring her out. Sometimes I don’t know what she’s aware of, if you know what I mean.’
‘What did she do?’ I said.
Azia paused to tie her hair back.
‘She attacked someone. A girl at her previous school. Tried to strangle her with a scarf.’ Azia wound a green-and-purple bandanna around her head; I noticed she glanced down at it first, as though she were trying to understand how it would feel to strangle someone with an item of clothing. ‘They kicked her out, of course. Amazingly, the girl didn’t press charges. I think schools always try to hush things up internally.’
Thinking of the Trace Incident, I nodded.
‘Emily, she was called, or Amelia,’ said Azia. ‘I only met her once.’
‘But why did Bel do it?’ I was curious now.
We had come to the tube station, where we would go in different directions on different lines.
‘She never said,’ said Azia. ‘I love Bel, love her to pieces, as my mum would say. I tolerate lots of her madness, and God knows, maybe I join her in some of her mayhem. But I can’t stand violence. It terrifies me. So I never asked. With Bel, you know, it’s just possible … that there was no reason at all.’
6
Ever since The Belle of the Ball, I’d been feeling a certain desire to get back onto some kind of stage. It was the look on the little boy’s pale face, after the performance; the sudden light when he smiled at me; the way he had clearly been taken out of himself for the short duration of the play. I wanted to do that again, and again. Of course, every story is a performance. So is every lie. But the lighting and directing, the programmes and the costumes, the massed audience and the thrilling wave of applause – those things were all new to me, and I found them intoxicating. I started to want acting to become a part of my daily life. I was not sure how. I didn’t want to study costume, like Evie; I wanted to be on the stage, under the lights, saying lines that weren’t mine.
And so, when Sarah Cousins read out a reminder from the drama department about auditions for the Lower Sixth production of A Doll’s House, I hesitated for no more than a few minutes before I decided to try.
I’d been thinking for a while that I was getting very detached from life at school. I had allowed a kind of alienation to set in, after the Trace Incident. Sarah Cousins, I was sure, now hated me; you had only to listen to her clipped, nasal, questioning voice as she said my name to know that. I felt like a translucent question mark hung over me as I walked across the courtyard, or down to the art room for Life Class. (Yes, I still went to Life Class.) I imagined people saying: ‘Do you think she did …?’ And with that, I felt a real, solid shame. Not for what I had done, but for the fact that people suspected me of doing it. The Trace Incident had been a performance of a kind, I realised. Maybe it just hadn’t been good enough.
I dodged the attention of the headmistress. When I wasn’t with Bel, which was often, I did my own work; I had occasional conversations with my teachers about what I wanted to study after Sixth form, but I was unable to furnish them with any definite plans. I was waiting for my mother to come back from Romania, I kept saying.
All this, I realised suddenly, had an unfortunate side effect. I looked guilty. My inability to engage with anyone or anything at school other than in the most passive ways made me look like I’d done something wrong. And that was the last thing I wanted. No: I needed to get involved, promptly, with some school-based event. Not just swimming; carving up the lanes with my butterfly strokes every Friday was hardly a team activity.
And then came the reminder. A Doll’s House. Auditions. Monday at 4.15.
At first, I thought: no. And then: why not?
The drama teacher, Mrs Tomaski, had an office in a trailer near the car park. Auditions for plays, as far as I knew, were always held there. Taller even than Evie, Mrs Tomaski was massive-chested and wide-hipped and motherly, with a helmet of dark grey hair, and talked in the booming voice of a Professional Thespian. She called everyone ‘dear’, mainly because she was incapable of remembering names.
‘Hello, dear. Come in, and welcome,’ she bellowed, when I showed up at the trailer door sometime after school. I’d waited until the line of girls had dissipated; I did not care for an audience yet.
‘Now, you I don’t know in the slightest,’ said Mrs Tomaski.
‘I’m Nora,’ I said.
‘Yes, dear: everyone will read for Nora. But what is your name?’
‘Nora,’ I said. I could see this might go on for some time. ‘Nora Tobias,’ I added. ‘I’m in Twelve C.’
‘Ah: your actual name is Nora!’ The penny had dropped. ‘How funny. Have I taught you, dear?’
‘Yes, in Years Seven and Eight, for a term,’ I said. I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t remember me; she wasn’t the type to take particular notice of my birthmark, and I had done nothing to distinguish myself during the brief drama modules I’d taken. Wallflower Nora had definitely not volunteered to step into the limelight.
There was a slight delay, while she looked for the photocopies she’d been using for the auditions. ‘Thought I’d seen the last of you girls. Put the pages down somewhere … but where? A-ha, they’re under the cat.’
A ginger tom, fatter even than the Ingram family’s overfed tortoiseshell, was displaced from a faded sofa while Mrs Tomaski seized a plastic sleeve full of printed sheets. She handed me one and told me to study it for a while. Did I know the play? I said I did not. Tactfully, she went to the kettle and began making tea, humming under her breath. She offered me a cup, which I thought was very courteous. Clearly, if there was any gossip about Nora Tobias the Little Liar, Honeytrap Extraordinaire, in the staffroom, it hadn’t reached the decorated ears of Mrs Tomaski. I started to relax. I focused with intent on the words before me. Here was another Nora. As I had become the Fairy Godmother in The Belle of the Ball, now I would become Nora Helmer, wife of Torvald. Although I’d told Mrs Tomaski that I didn’t know the play, I had by this time read it three times.
‘Are you ready, dear?’ said the drama teacher.
I began to read.
When I’d finished, I could tell that Mrs Tomaski was pleased. She didn’t say much, but her expression was easy to interpret.
‘You have a lovely way of speaking, dear,’ she said.
A few days later, Mrs Tomaski posted the cast list on the drama department’s intranet page, just before term ended. Even though I knew I’d impressed her, I was not expecting to be given a part. It is always better not to have expectations. But she’d given me the role of Nora, even though I had so little experience.
Evie called that evening and was overjoyed to hear the news.
‘To see you coming out of yourself, sometimes,’ she said rather cryptically. ‘It’s very pleasing.’
I realised that, for all the many long days I’d spent worrying about my mother’s wellbeing, I’d never considered that she might also, occasionally, have been worrying about me.
7
The Easter holidays came around, and Bel’s hard work was rewarded with a much-improved set of reports. Anton took us all out for a celebratory dinner to a Japanese restaurant that Bel loved. Darian held my chair for me in a gentlemanly way as I sat down, and I noticed Bel notice this. There was a quick flicker across her face of something like annoyance, but it didn’t stay long. Summoning the waitress, Bel demanded mixed sashimi and miso soup, and tofu deep-fried to a honeyed crisp, and aubergine with sesame sauce. Anton and Darian drank Tiger beers; Bel drank sake and I drank water.
I looked round the restaurant, watching a man hunched in solitude over a bowl of noodles. Evie was due back at the end of the holidays, and although I missed her a good deal, I realised that I would also miss the freedom I’d had to stay over at Bel’s, to live life as she did, answering to almost nobody.
‘Salmon teriyaki,’ said Bel.
‘I think we’ve ordered enough to be going on with,’ said Anton. He was looking quite relaxed that evening, the lines around his eyes not so pronounced.
‘What beautiful daughters you have,’ said the waitress, bringing more beer.
‘Just the one daughter,’ said Anton, nodding at Bel. ‘And one son,’ he added.
‘Don’t you think I look like Mama?’ said Bel, when the waitress had gone.
‘Very like,’ said her father. ‘As I’ve told you before.’
Darian was playing a piano scale on the tabletop. He looked at Bel as she patted her hands over her hair, and rolled his eyes. Then, taking a dollop of wasabi, he dissolved it with care in the ceramic dish of soy sauce. This wasn’t Bel’s way; she liked to smear it all over whatever she was eating, ingesting too much, and then wheeze and cough in a kind of hybrid of agony and delight.
