by Lucy Parker
She was horrified. “Did he intend for you to find him?”
“No. It just wouldn’t have occurred to him. I doubt he gave me a second thought that day.” Richard sat down on the desk again.
How could he be so calm about that? He should be outraged.
He deserved so much better.
“I’m ashamed of him.” There was no heat in the statement. “Not because of the suicide, but for everything he did before that. Everything he was. It’s shameful.” He met her gaze. “But I’m doing my best to ensure he doesn’t have a lasting impact. Not on me. Not on anyone. The press can say what they like. They can dig out the truth—they can make up something more saleable. If anything, it’ll probably give my career a boost. An interesting dark past. Finally—the reason why he’s such a bastard.”
“But—”
“But it came from you.” He shook his head before she could interrupt. “I know. I know you didn’t do it on purpose, Tig.”
At the sound of that stupid nickname, Lainie’s throat constricted. She felt a burning sensation at the back of her eyes and swiped her thumb across her lashes.
“I still feel like I got shafted. By my lover, my best friend and my family, all at once.” His mouth twisted. “All you.”
Oh God. This was the problem with falling head over heels for a spectacularly good actor. He had a way with words that could cut her off at the knees.
“I trusted you. Against my better judgement.”
Ouch.
The room was so quiet that she thought she could hear the sound of her own heartbeat.
“However this started—” Richard was grim “—I can’t be your rebound relationship.”
“Rebound...?” she repeated blankly.
“Farmer.”
“Uh, has nothing to do with this.”
“Doesn’t he?”
“No. He doesn’t.” His face didn’t change. He didn’t believe her. Maybe didn’t want to believe her. “Do I throw your exes in your face all the damn time? What, am I just never going to be allowed to forget that mistake?”
“Do you want to forget about it?” Dark cynicism.
Lainie folded her arms, as much in need of comfort as to express her frustration. “I had.” She spoke slowly. “I almost had forgotten about the whole thing. I was too busy being happy.”
She sought for the right words. They were there, but she couldn’t say them. Not right now. “God. You’ve kind of got me over a barrel here.” She looked at the floor. “There are things I was going to say, and now I can’t, or they’d turn into bargaining chips. Like I’m just using them to get you to forgive me. If you even believed me.” She lifted her head, met the intensity of his gaze. “I won’t cheapen my feelings like that. They’re worth more than that.”
That caused a flicker of expression, but the cynicism was still deeply engrained when he spoke. “Sounds like a cop-out.”
Right.
She stood up straighter. “I’m going now.” She held up her hand with her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Because you’re this close to pissing me off. And I don’t want to have more things to apologise for later.”
She turned at the door. He was still and watchful. “But I wouldn’t breathe too easy. This is not me giving up on us.” It was a vow. “I won’t turn my back on you.”
She wasn’t even tempted to cry on the Tube. She was beyond that. Fortunately, it wasn’t too full and she was able to find a seat. The exhaustion was a constant tug at her mind and muscles.
She couldn’t think. It was as if she was standing at a crossroads. Her life could go one of two ways from this point, and she didn’t dare visualise the dark route, in case it was encouraged into existence. The words teased at the recesses of her mind: What does my future look like, if he can’t get past this?
An elderly woman took a seat opposite her. She was carrying a mesh bag filled with cans of cat food, her hair was sticking straight out and her black trousers were covered with pet hair.
Lainie chose not to interpret that as a bad omen.
* * *
Richard dismissed Greg early after Lainie flounced out, plait flying, almost crackling with indignation and determination. He sat in the study for a long time, thinking. In a totally misguided move, he went so far as to smoke one of the cigars on the desk.
It was totally rank, did nothing to help clarify his thoughts, and he felt sick for the rest of the morning.
But by the time he left for the Metronome, his coat buttoned up to his throat against the cold, he was finally being honest with himself.
Chapter Eleven
London Celebrity @LondonCelebrity. 3h
Emergency services called to the Metronome Theatre. We’re investigating live
at the scene.
“No. No.” Bennett threw down a wad of papers in disgust. He had abandoned his seat in the stalls and was pacing up and down on the stage, to the visible annoyance of Richard and disconcertion of Will. He gripped violently at what little remained of his hair. Lainie could see where the rest of it must have gone. “Troy and Farmer, get out. Cool off in your dressing rooms. Take a bit of time to reflect. See if they’re hiring at Waitrose. Lainie and Chloe—ten-minute break, then get back here for another run-through of scene four.”
Lainie exchanged speaking glances with Chloe. She thought they’d been doing fairly well this time. Bennett was obviously not in a mood to agree.
Will put a hand on the edge of the stage and jumped into the orchestra pit—presumably to have a word with someone, not out of sheer frustration with their director. Bennett was turning into the West End’s answer to Big Brother. Every time she turned around, he was there, watching, carping and criticising. They had all been run ragged from the moment they’d entered the theatre.
She finally summoned the courage to look at Richard. She had been a blatant coward for the past ninety minutes, not in the mood to sustain another encounter with the Ice Man. To her surprise, he was looking back at her. And the way he was looking at her kindled a cautious spark of optimism. Deep, searching intent. She couldn’t read exactly what he was feeling, but he was letting himself feel something. That was a step up from this morning.
He tossed his sword aside and started to walk toward her. Dispensing with the lethal weapon. Also a good sign.
Lainie checked to make sure Bennett was otherwise occupied, and met Richard halfway. She could smell the faint scent of his cologne—deep, spicy and masculine. There seemed to be new creases around his eyes and mouth. She wanted to put her arms around him.
Unsure whether he would let her hold him or if he’d just chuck her into the orchestra pit with Will, she refrained.
“Lainie—”
She interrupted him, spoke quickly to get the words out before he frosted over again or said something to provoke her. “Look, I just want you to know. When Will broke up with me—” she rolled her eyes “—well, indirectly broke up with me, I was embarrassed. I didn’t know about Crystalle. Other people did. A lot of people. I felt stupid, and really naïve, and...and small. But I was no more upset about losing Will, as a person, than I was about my first boyfriend at school.” She winced. “Less, probably. I was a very emo teenager.”
“Lainie, you don’t have to—”
“Yes. I do. For a very short amount of time, Will made me feel like I was worth nothing. I won’t have him doing the same thing to you. Especially since you’ve made me feel like me again.”
The fierceness in Richard’s eyes gentled. He touched her then, lightly, his palm lifting to cradle her cheek, and her own eyes stung.
“Richard.” It was Margaret, looking harassed. “Sorry to interrupt. I need a word about the new set change.”
His fingers tightened, unintentionally biting into her jaw before he released her. He blew out a breath, tearing his gaze from her to acknowledge Margaret. “Yes. What is it?”
Aware of the hint of curiosity in Margaret’s side-glance, and in desperate need of some fresh air, L
ainie went out the back door by the props room. It opened into a bleak little side alley, lined with discarded cigarette butts and crisp packets, but it was quiet. The wind whipped through her loose hair and down the front of her jumper. She crossed her arms and bounced a few times at the knees, trying to keep warm. And almost leapt out of her new ankle boots when the door banged open behind her.
The familiar scent and feel of Richard’s cashmere coat thumped over her shoulders.
“If you have to stand out here in five-degree weather, put on a bloody coat.” He spun her around, jerked up her chin and kissed her hard on the mouth. “Bennett’s blown his fuse again.” His breath was warm against her cold lips as he spoke. “Your presence is required.” He looked into her eyes. “We’ll talk later.”
He left her flushed, breathless and definitely not cold.
As kisses went, it wouldn’t make her personal top ten. For one thing, there was still an edge of temper under the surface, and angry snogging didn’t really rev her engine the way it seemed to for vintage romance heroines. He’d also caught her by surprise, and she’d bitten her tongue.
But, for the first time all day, she was smiling when she returned to the marginal warmth of the back hallway.
With Richard and Will effectively banished to the naughty step, the atmosphere onstage was a lot more relaxed. However, by the time she and Chloe had run through the same scene four times, to scant appreciation from Bennett, Lainie was equally ready to take refuge downstairs.
“You despise her!” Bennett sounded as if he was at the end of his rope. He gestured at Chloe in exasperation. “This is sheer bloody vengeance, ladies, not a frigging tea party.”
Casual sexism was rampant in the workplace.
Lainie frowned, Chloe put a sassy hand on her hip—and an ancient, supposedly defunct gas pipe exploded in the greenroom.
The actual blast wasn’t that alarming. It sounded more like a large car backfiring than anything else. There was a moment of blank surprise.
The tremendous crack and crash that followed ten seconds later shook the stage. The Metronome’s excellent acoustics carried the deafening rumble clear to the cheap seats in the back. It was as if an express train had taken a wrong turn off the Piccadilly line and rammed straight through the theatre. Lainie put out a hand and grabbed at the nearest support, which happened to be Chloe’s shoulder.
In the intense quiet of the aftermath, she heard a faint crackling and spitting sound through the wings.
Then the shouting began.
“What the hell was that?” The bemused question was spoken right near her ear. She wouldn’t otherwise have made out the distinct words above the rising clamour.
Bennett’s deep bellow proved useful for once. His voice cut through the chaos like a guiding foghorn in the mist. “Everybody out. Front exit. Gather in the street. Carson—roll call.”
“But—what’s happened?” Chloe sounded bewildered.
The back of the stage seemed to be full of people in work overalls, jostling aside other people holding clipboards and phones.
“Chloe. Lainie.” Margaret was there again, her face pale, her arms outstretched to herd them down into the stalls.
“Jesus Christ.” Someone spoke from the wings. “The floor’s caved in.”
A pause. An authoritative, rapid-fire question: “How many people were down there?”
“Troy and Farmer, for sure. Maybe others. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
The floor of the greenroom was the ceiling of the principal dressing rooms.
Lainie acted on autopilot. She was physically unaware of her feet as she began to walk forward, toward the wings, toward Richard. In her strangely calm mind, it seemed perfectly logical that she could just reach through the hole in the floor and pluck him out.
“Lainie.” Chloe was grabbing at her elbow. A masculine hand was closing around her upper arm.
Why was nobody going in there?
And she didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. She was going backwards. Literally. Even when she was outside on the street, the cold wind biting against her cheeks, she didn’t realise how hard she was struggling.
It had happened too quickly. Her mind couldn’t catch up with her instincts. Which were urging her to go. Back. Inside.
Tourists were looking at her. People were talking to her. Bill, the props master, was hugging her, which seemed a bit inappropriate. She kicked him, with vague violence, and he yelped.
“If you see a posh prick in a silk shirt in there,” he said to someone, in his strong Geordie accent, “tell him to get his arse out here and deal with his own bloody woman.”
Obviously, it was ridiculous. She wasn’t Lara Croft. She would probably end up falling headfirst into the basement. Intellectually, she knew that. Intellectually, she was aware that other people, including Will, could also be inside. Under that floor.
She had no emotional reserves to focus on anyone except Richard.
She really hadn’t known that she loved him this much.
People in uniform were streaming into the Metronome. They didn’t have tickets.
She had admired that death trap. It had seemed to be full of...to be full of romantic ghosts.
She started to shake. She couldn’t breathe.
Richard was probably buried under a pile of bricks, and she was having her first ever panic attack, in the middle of a busy London road.
A camera flashed, and she winced.
“Lainie?” Chloe’s face appeared right in front of her own, nightmarishly close. The whole thing was a nightmare. And Chloe was almost forty years old, and had no lines on her face at all.
What was up with that?
Lainie wasn’t even thirty, and she already had permanent stress creases in her forehead. Probably crow’s-feet as well, after today.
Sanity began to return—and with it, crushing horror.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “Oh God. Chloe.”
Chloe took her hands and gripped them tightly. Her voice was calm and cool as she proved herself once and for all the mother of a teenager, used to hysterics. “They’ll be fine, Lainie.” She gave Lainie’s hands a single, forceful shake. “Keep it together. They’ll be fine.”
Lainie’s attention returned to the façade of the theatre. It looked so innocent. If she raised her gaze above street level, where emergency services personnel were gathering in a buzzing cluster, like the epicentre of a beehive, it looked like any other day.
She was afraid to even blink, in case her whole world came crashing down when she closed her eyes.
* * *
It was a measure of how bad the past couple of days had been, that when Richard’s dressing room collapsed around him in a dusty pile of rubble, his primary reaction was irritation.
His Wi-Fi connection had kept timing out, which a few seconds earlier had seemed like the pinnacle on the mountain of crap he’d been dealing with for the past forty-odd hours. He was halfway out the door, in search of a stronger signal, when everything went to hell. It was an implosion rather than an explosion. The room literally seemed to buckle, folding in on itself like something out of The Matrix before it shattered.
He ended up on his knees, his eyes wet and stinging with grit, the ground quivering beneath him. Strangely, he was most aware of the hiss of an old-fashioned exposed lightbulb as it swayed and flickered from a broken beam. It was nearly impossible to see anything in the gloom, and difficult to breathe in the dense air.
He struggled to his feet, but had to bend at the waist. What was left of the ceiling in the hallway had lowered to proportions that even fifteenth-century cottage-dwellers would have found claustrophobic. The electrics were just barely hanging in there, but most of the lights had shattered.
What the everlasting fuck...
Richard could hear his own breaths, loud and rough in the stillness. He could hear nothing from the floors above. It was horrifically eerie. He didn’t know how much of this section of the theatre was still s
tanding. He couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think about Lainie, or he would lose his mind.
He braced one hand against the far wall, then snatched it back as he felt the stones move. Rubble had spilled over the length of the hallway, blocking the way to the north stairs. His dressing room, to his left, was scrap metal and broken mortar. There was only one way to go.
He tripped and stumbled several times in the dim light. It was slow progress as he inched forward, wary of each careful step as the building shuddered around him. Dust clogged his nose, and he took a glancing blow to the shoulder from falling stone.
He’d once done an independent film set in a bombed hotel during the Second World War, and the staging had not been entirely dissimilar. It was a lot less enjoyable without the cameras and crew.
He crawled over a pile of bricks, got his first glimpse of stronger light and realised that the south hallway was intact. If he hadn’t already been on his knees, he would have dropped down in gratitude.
Behind him came a low, rumbling, metallic groan, as if the Metronome was in its dying throes and wasn’t going to go out quietly.
It almost drowned out the faint cry for help. He so nearly didn’t hear him.
Richard froze, listening, his eyes fixed on dingy, beautifully solid walls and floorboards, every instinct of self-preservation urging him forward. He turned his head, looked at the shivering wreckage. It was going to come down.
Oh, hell.
Despite the mess they’d made post-collapse, the walls had been thin. He’d heard the sounds of an iPad game next door, and it hadn’t been that long ago. Fifteen minutes at most. He was on his feet again. He took a step back.
