Act Like It

by Lucy Parker

  “We bumped into each other in the pyjama section of Primark. We’re both really into the onesie this year.” Lainie rolled her eyes. “I met him in his lounge. When I went to his flat.”

  “You went to...” Words seemed to fail Richard for a moment. The man had so much to learn about her yet. “How did you even know where he lives?”

  “I have my methods, Watson.” Steeling her spine against his hostility, Lainie bent down and picked up his spare water bottle. He was big on hydration. Cracking the seal on the lid, she opened it and took a sip. “He was very nice. It’s heartening to know that the RSPA doesn’t turn all of its members into handsy, middle-aged perverts. I can stop worrying about your future.”

  Richard firmly removed the water bottle from her grip. “Get your own drink. Why did you call on Steinman?”

  “To tell him about his VP’s idea of a postprandial nightcap.” Lainie flicked a speck of fluff from her jumper. She closed her fist when she saw that her fingers were unsteady. “And to provide you with a character reference in case he was under the impression that you’re an impatient, irresponsible, sarky git. Which is only partly true.”

  “We are in a chipper mood today.” The observation was cold.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Lainie’s smile was nothing less than the raising of a metaphorical blade. Pure challenge. And no one was seeing through it to the insidious little ribbon of fear underneath. Because she was a damn good actress. Even Richard had said so, in a roundabout, somewhat half-assed way. “You were totally right yesterday.”

  Richard’s eyes had narrowed. He merely raised an eyebrow in response, conceding no further advantage.

  “You have no idea what you’ve let yourself in for.”

  Bennett came slamming back into the stalls from the administration offices, and she turned to resume her position on the stage. “By the way,” she said, looking over her shoulder, “you were also wrong yesterday.”

  He remained entirely still.

  “We’ve never pretended with each other, you and I.”

  From Bennett’s perspective, the second act rehearsal was as disastrous as the first. Richard had stopped behaving like a first-class grump, but now seemed distracted. For the first time in their entire run, he had to be prompted on a missed line, which at least had the effect of shaking him out of his trance. The prompt received scant appreciation for her help when he scowled fiercely at her.

  And the love scene between Lainie and Will, always awkward for at least one of the participants, now had the effect of making everyone in the vicinity uncomfortable, for one reason or another. Will almost kissed Lainie’s chin instead of her mouth; his eyes kept straying to the dark, dangerous presence over her shoulder. Richard’s hand tightened around his tankard with such force that the handle cracked and a grip had to run for a spare. Chloe’s gaze kept darting anxiously between the three of them.

  It was with utter disgust that Bennett called an end to the run-through. “But don’t think you’re going anywhere. And get me a coffee,” he snapped at Margaret, who rolled her eyes as she walked away. “We’ll have an understudy rehearsal of the second act, so we can all compare performances and wonder why the fuck the four of you are receiving principal pay. At three o’clock, we’ll take another stab at the final four scenes. Endeavour to make them less of a travesty. Tonight’s audience paid to see a Bennett production, not a free-for-all at the local kindergarten.”

  Lainie followed Chloe into the wings, grateful to get out from under the lights and away from Bennett’s critical eye for a while. It was uncomfortable, having her relationship dynamics witnessed and dissected by most of her coworkers.

  Will tried to speak to her again, but she pulled her arm free of his grip. Richard stalked past them without even a sidelong glance.

  She went back to her dressing room. She needed to gather her defences, raid her chocolate stash and get her act together. They couldn’t behave like that onstage tonight. Professional standards didn’t need to go out the window with her relationship status.

  In a ridiculous flash of hope, her breath caught when someone knocked on the door. Sanity returned quickly. Richard was not going to seek her out right now for anything less than a civil emergency, and he wouldn’t politely knock under any circumstances.

  “Come in.” If it was Will, she was letting fly with her powder compact this time.

  The door opened and Lynette Stern came in. She surveyed Lainie where she sat sprawled in front of her vanity table, then sat down on the armchair and helped herself to a few chocolates. “We seem to have our first hiccup.”

  Lainie rescued the remaining chocolates before Lynette could eat all the strawberry creams. She made a pile of her particular favourites on the table. She was not having a good day. The prospect of comfort sex was exceedingly slim, so she was going to require her full quota of chocolate.

  “No offence, but I don’t recall agreeing to a ménage. ‘We’ is Richard and me. And we stopped being PR property quite some time ago. And I don’t think he views the situation quite that lightly.”

  “And how exactly did the ‘situation,’ as you put it, arise?” Lynette warily bit the corner from a chocolate and peered into its interior. “Richard is far too wily to bleat to the press about his father. I was unaware of that particular blip in his history. He doesn’t seem to have made a habit of sharing confidences over a cuppa. Logic would thus condemn you as the weak link.”

  Okay, not exactly a morale boost, but hard to dispute.

  “It was my fault, yes.” There was no point in mentioning Will’s involvement. It still came down to her, and she didn’t really want anything to do with him at the moment. She sighed. “How bad is it?”

  “It’s unfortunate. If it had been a less controversial suicide,” Lynette said, with quite appalling callousness, “I could easily have worked it to Richard’s advantage. Father commits suicide due to mother acting like a tart. Sympathy abounds.”

  “Enjoying sex doesn’t make you a tart,” Lainie said. “I merely mention.”

  Lynette ignored the interruption. “However, nobody likes a dirty politician. People aren’t all that fond of the politicians who don’t fiddle with the public funds.”

  Lainie accidentally squashed a wrapped caramel in her clenched fist. “Has that got out?”

  Bloody Richard. Always right.

  “Sketchy allusions to dirty dealing. No specifics. Someone’s been digging, but most of the records were sealed by a previous government. The press have got enough to run with, but nothing they can actually pin down.”

  She bit hard on her lower lip. “Exactly how bad is this for Richard?”

  “The effect on his career should be minimal. Most people expect there to be a few skeletons in the Troy closet. Right now, he’s the smouldering, brooding half of the West End’s golden couple. The average blog reader isn’t that interested in twenty-year-old gossip. They’d rather speculate on what goes on behind closed doors when you disappear into his mansion flat.”

  Lainie didn’t take much comfort from the assurances. She could hear the giant looming but. She was almost afraid to ask. “What about the RSPA chair?”

  “Too early to tell, but I’ve been poking my nose into a few nests, and little birds inform me that he’s still Jeremy Steinman’s favourite candidate. Steinman has a weighty influence. Nor would it help the committee if they openly punished the son for the father’s sins. It’s fairly widely known in administrative circles that Richard doesn’t share his father’s prejudices.” Lynette hesitated. “I should warn you, though, that when I left Richard five minutes ago, he was taking a call from a ministerial secretary about the conference next month. First impression—not looking good.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “I understand the sentiment.” Lynette unwrapped another chocolate. “So I’ll excuse your French.”

  “Merci beaucoup,” Lainie snapped as she stomped toward the door, “but I didn’t say merde.”

  What a shit of a
day.

  She tracked down Richard in a corridor outside the greenroom, which was still reverberating with noise from the builders’ drills. He had just ended a call and was sliding his phone into his back pocket.

  “What did they say?” She anxiously scanned his face, trying to read something into the bland mockery, searching for a trace of the shiver-inducing feelings she had caught lurking there recently. “They haven’t dropped you from the conference, have they?”

  “They have.” His voice was remote. “It’s understandable. The Ministry wants to keep media attention focused on their agenda. Not on the resounding irony of Franklin Troy’s son waving a banner for increased cultural funding, after the father manipulated the system to line his own pocket. And made such a tremendously poor job of it, too.”

  Absently, she reached out and gripped a handful of his jumper. And hopefully a bit of accidental chest hair; otherwise, she wasn’t thrilled about the visible flinch. “What can I do?”

  “You can’t do anything.” He shrugged. “We turn the page and move on.”

  His indifference would have been harder to handle if it hadn’t been for the look in his eyes. For the first time in his adult life, Richard Troy’s acting ability was letting him down with a thump. Lainie caught her breath.

  Before she could respond, a callboy stuck his head out of the greenroom door and politely delivered Bennett’s order to return to the stage.

  “Er, as soon as possible,” the kid said, glancing uncomfortably between them. “Like, now, really.”

  Richard started to move past her and she caught his arm, ignoring his impatient glance. “This isn’t over,” she said warningly.

  He gave her another long, tumultuous look before he turned abruptly and walked away.

  Bennett foiled any further attempts at reconciliation that afternoon by turning completely neurotic. He refused to let any of the cast out of his sight, and started demanding peer critiques, as if they were doing group exercises back at drama school. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was far too self-absorbed to care about his minions’ sex lives, Lainie would have suspected him of deliberate troublemaking. For the last hour before they had to report to makeup and wardrobe, he forced Richard and Chloe to sit in the audience and observe the “total lack of chemistry” between her and Will. Richard sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, one ankle crossed over the other. When Bennett requested constructive criticism of the love scene, he turned a stare on the director that could have whittled the edges from a diamond.

  It wasn’t the strongest performance of the run, but they made it through the evening without incident. Lainie intended to tackle Richard again after the curtain call, but was ambushed backstage by Victoria and a couple of her friends, whom she’d completely forgotten were coming. She wouldn’t have minded so much if it had been Sarah, but Vicky wasn’t shy about expressing unsought and usually unwelcome opinions.

  “Where’s Richard?” Vicky looked around the dressing room and peered under the vanity table. As if they’d been interrupted midtryst and he might be crouching naked under there.

  Lainie drew on every remaining scrap of patience. “He’s gone home.” Damn it.

  Her sister-in-law checked her watch and exchanged knowing glances with the other women. “He doesn’t hang around, does he?”

  “He has an early meeting tomorrow,” she lied stiffly, but the attempt at deflection only resulted in more arch smiles.

  “Oh,” said Vicky. Another one bites the dust, said her expression.

  Lainie smiled serenely at her brother’s ever so slightly unfortunate choice of wife.

  Inwardly, she curled into a ball and reached glumly for the ice cream spoon.

  * * *

  Richard was woken at nine o’clock by his phone, after lying awake until almost five. The first thing that registered on a conscious level was the faint scent of perfume. His vision was bleary; his eyes felt red and gritty from lack of sleep.

  Red. He’d always associated his father with the colour red. The redness of rage. The red bloom of whisky. The red stain of blood.

  Of shame.

  Red. Lainie’s hair, smooth and silky around his fingers. He clenched his jaw as he stared up at the ceiling.

  Everything was temporary. It didn’t last—the bad.

  Apparently the good was equally short-lived.

  Without looking at the phone, he reached out and grabbed it from the side table.

  “Yes?” His tone didn’t encourage loquacity. He was going to be running on caffeine and obstinacy today.

  “Richard? It’s Greg. Were we supposed to meet this morning? I’m outside your front door, but there’s no answer.”

  Fuck. Richard threw off the bedcovers and reached for the trousers he’d left on the floor. “I slept in. Sorry. Two minutes.”

  When he opened the front door, his assistant was holding a briefcase in one hand and a tray of coffees and bakery bags in the other. The daily papers were wedged under his elbow. Richard looked at the disposable cups and his mouth curved. “Expect a Christmas bonus. I’ll have a shower and meet you in the study.”

  They were halfway through a stack of financial grant contracts, and Greg Worth had doubled the size of his impending bonus by not mentioning the morning tabloids, when the doorbell rang. The document Richard was holding creased under the pressure of his grip.

  Greg glanced at him. “I’ll get it, shall I?”

  “Thanks.” He tried to concentrate on the contract, but the words swam into illegible nonsense. He threw it down on the desk in disgust, and turned to wait for her.

  Lainie came in ahead of Greg, offering his assistant a polite smile when the other man bowed out, closing the door behind him.

  “Good morning.” Her voice was quiet.

  Richard noted the heaviness around her eyes, which she’d tried to hide with makeup. Her hair was in a long, thick plait over one shoulder, and she was wearing a woollen bobble hat. Probably hand-knitted by Rachel Graham. There had been a basket of wool and knitting needles at her parents’ house. Lainie came from the sort of family where people made things for each other, gifted things simply because they wanted to.

  The two of them were worlds apart.

  “Good morning.” He sat down on the edge of the desk and nodded toward a leather chair. “Do you want to sit?”

  Lainie’s air of trepidation was rapidly dissolving into more familiar sparks. “No.” The line of her pretty mouth was mutinous. “I want you to stop treating me like I’m here to audit your taxes.”

  He surveyed her. “If you were here to audit my taxes, I would have offered you a coffee.”

  A flush rose up her neck, and the urge to follow it with his lips was a sharp twist in his gut.

  She inhaled deeply, visibly gathering her patience. She jerked her chin toward the closed door. “Was that your assistant?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was very polite. You haven’t told him, then?” She looked at him pointedly. “That you think we’ve broken up?”

  She could dig in with her fingers and push his buttons like no one else, and she knew it, but he ignored the bait. “It’s none of his business. He’s my assistant, not my psychologist.”

  She started to reply, then paused. “Do you have a psychologist?”

  “On and off since I was fourteen.” He shrugged. “I was okay with any suggestion that minimised the chances of turning into my father.” He lifted an eyebrow at the curious look on her face. “What? You disapprove?”

  “No. Not at all. I was just thinking that I don’t give you enough credit.”

  Unsettled, he moved irritably and dislodged a morning newspaper from the pile on the desk.

  Lainie looked down where it had fallen. “Is there...more today?”

  There inevitably would be. The media was relentless. They would wring any profitable topic dry. “I haven’t looked.”

  She pulled hard on the end of her plait. “I had a call from a reporter this morning. Wa
nting to know if I’m standing by you in your time of trouble—” she seemed barely able to get it out “—or ratting on the sinking ship. His actual words. He’s left three more messages since.”

  A pulse of fury penetrated the cold, bleak feeling in his chest. “What’s his name?”

  “Anthony...something.”

  “Not Sutcliffe?”

  “That’s it. Do you know him?”

  “He usually works for the London Arts Quarterly. They don’t scavenge for cheap sensationalism. He must be freelancing. I’ll deal with it. He won’t be harassing you again.”

  She came closer to him, reaching out to touch his arm. He looked down at her fingers. He wanted to hold them. He wanted them tangled in his hair, flirting with his lower lip, stroking his back, running down his chest.

  He needed her to leave.

  * * *

  He was distancing himself again. She could almost see his features icing over, after that protective reflex when she’d mentioned the stalker reporter.

  “Richard...” God, she didn’t know what to say. She’d still been so determined when she woke up this morning. So insensitive, really. She’d thought she could come here and make him forgive her.

  She’d been prepared for his usual armour, the frosty shell and snotty comments. She hadn’t expected him to look so...tired.

  “I’m sorry.” She held his arm tighter, and he didn’t push her away this time. He didn’t do anything. “You know I’m sorry. I would never hurt you on purpose. You know that. I realise you don’t always listen when people speak, but you at least know me as well as that by now.”

  “Lainie—”

  “What can I do?” She bit her lip, hard. “Seriously, what can I do? I can’t...I can’t just undo it. I can’t stop them writing about it.”

  “Do you think that’s what matters?” The words seemed to have been pulled from Richard with force. He bent down and picked up the paper, jerking it open. There was a large article on the third page with an appropriately lurid headline: Richard Troy Recalls Finding Father’s Body. “Factually incorrect, as usual. By sheer chance, I wasn’t the one who found him. It was a Monday. When I was home from school, I was expected to report to my father’s study on Monday afternoons to discuss what I’d achieved in the previous week. And what I could do better during the next.” His lip curled. “I was late. I got caught up at a friend’s house. The housekeeper found him. Screamed the place down like some bit part from Midsomer Murders.”