The Understudy

by Sophie Hannah

  The passenger door closes with a solid but soft p-thunk. I’m certain Jess isn’t trying to score points by demonstrating that her approach to door-closing-in-times-of-stress is more mature than mine, but it feels as if she is.

  Nine, fuck Ruby Donovan, ten, and fuck the shitty Orla Flynn Academy.

  I should have insisted on a one-to-one meeting with Adam Racki. Why did he summon us all? There was no need for Bronnie and Elise to be there, unless he thought Bel or Sadie might have put that monstrosity in Jess’s locker, and no one thinks that. We all know Ruby did it—even Kendall knows, deep down.

  I can guess why he wanted all four of us there, the sneaky worm. He wanted to dilute the Carolyn effect. (‘Who can blame him?’ every member of my immediate family would say. They’d expect me to find it funny, too.)

  Predictably, neither Bronnie nor Elise spoke up: Bronnie because she’s about as much use as a spokeless umbrella and Elise because she doesn’t give a damn one way or the other. Which was convenient for Racki.

  I wanted to see Kendall, so I agreed to a group meeting. There’s a streak of naïve optimism in me that will not die. I hoped this time might be different, that Kendall might finally take responsibility for her despicable daughter instead of making excuses. If this music box horror show isn’t enough to make her say, ‘I am so sorry, and I’m going to come down on Ruby like a ton of bricks,’ then what will?

  ‘Mum?’ Jess’s voice cuts through my thoughts. ‘Please tell me you didn’t steam in there this morning accusing Ruby and trying to get her expelled.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘You did, didn’t you? Without talking to me first. Mum!’

  Jess might sound strict and bossy, but I know what’s beneath that: anxiety. Fear. My daughter doesn’t like to show any weakness—a trait she gets from her mother. When Ruby’s antics got to be too much for her last year, she didn’t cry or complain. Instead, she disappeared: from home and from school. Thanks to some cryptic pictures she posted on Instagram, we found her three days later, in Manchester. She’d been sleeping on a bench for two nights. When Dan and I found her, her face was covered with a film of grime. She grinned at us and said, ‘Don’t I look like a proper homeless person?’ When we asked her why she’d done what she’d done, she said, ‘I needed some time away from Ruby. And before you say I never have to go near her again if I don’t want to . . . no. I’m not letting her drive me out of my school. I can survive any shit that Ruby’s got lined up for me now.’

  Adam Racki seemed sufficiently panicked by the whole thing, though whether for Jess’s safety or his school’s reputation, who can say, but even then he didn’t properly discipline Ruby. He seemed to decide Jess’s little foray into being a vagrant in Manchester was some kind of method acting exercise. And I couldn’t force Jess to change schools when she was determined to prove how tough she was by staying.

  ‘Mum! For fuck’s sake!’

  Other mothers would say, Don’t swear at me. Other mothers would take their daughters out of harm’s way in spite of their protests.

  I hear Adam’s voice in my head: Here’s a chance for the girls to resolve any differences they have by welcoming a new friend. It was a pathetic, primary-school-level attempt at manipulation. You can tell a group of five-year-olds who’s going to be their new friend, but you can’t do it with teenagers. Was it designed to be a redemption opportunity for Ruby, after last year?

  Jess was Ruby’s new friend once. Evil loves to make new friends. It rubs its hands together and says, Ooh, nice. Another victim.

  ‘It wasn’t Ruby, Mum.’

  ‘What?’ This shocks me into opening my eyes. Jess and I don’t always agree, but we have about Ruby, so far.

  ‘The music box. She was with me all morning. She was even with me when I found it, and was as shocked as I was. She started crying. I was just, like, “What the fuck?” ’

  ‘Makes sense. Seeing it through your eyes gave her a few seconds of insight into her own warped mind. I’m not surprised she cried. She spent most of last year crying and apologizing, but it didn’t stop her persecuting you.’

  ‘Interesting,’ says Jess lightly, twisting the rearview mirror round so that she can check her makeup. ‘I thought you were going to go with the more obvious “She had to pretend to be upset in order to look innocent.” ’

  ‘I’d hate to be predictable,’ I mutter.

  ‘Nothing I say about the way Ruby’s mind works—’

  ‘It works like a chemical weapon in teenage girl form.’

  ‘—is going to convince you, even though this is so not her style. I keep telling you, though you never listen—we’re good now, me and Ruby. My disappearing act last year freaked her out, I think. She knew everyone’d blame her if I was found dead in a ditch.’

  There’s no point asking her not to joke about something so horrible. She’d only say I’m just as outrageously blunt when it suits me, and she’d be right.

  ‘So if Ruby didn’t do it, who could have?’ I ask. ‘Bel? Sadie?’

  ‘No and no. As if either of them would!’

  I agree. ‘I don’t think they did. For a school to contain more than one psycho capable of nastiness at that level—let’s call it the Ruby Donovan level—I don’t buy it.’ I pause to think. ‘Who knows the code for your locker?’

  ‘Ruby, Bel, Sadie. But . . . there’s a master code that opens all the lockers. Students are in and out of the office all day—any of them could have opened a drawer and found it. What? You might as well say it. I can hear it even if you don’t.’

  I don’t care if Ruby was glued to your side all day. She did this. Somehow.

  ‘How come you’re not more upset?’ I ask.

  ‘Aha! Great question.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I start the car, suddenly desperate to get the hell out of here.

  ‘Weirdly, it’s thanks to Ruby that I’m not totally traumatized,’ says Jess. ‘She’s been really, like, looking after me. So have Bel and Sadie. Last year, it all got so awful, and our group nearly broke up completely, and now . . . I don’t know. It feels like we’re solid again. She actually said, “You of all people don’t deserve this, after what I put you through last year. I deserve it.” ’

  ‘Good point. Soon as we get home I’m going to make a music box with a maimed Ruby doll twisting around in it.’

  ‘No you’re not. Please just don’t do or say anything. Anything involving my friends. Let me sort it out. Mum? I swear to God, if you say the word “prospectus” . . .’

  I smile. Now that we’re out of the Academy car park and on our way home, I feel better. Is it possible to be allergic to one’s child’s school? Am I the first parent ever to ask herself this question? In my best compromise voice, I say, ‘I’m not going to send off for other schools’ prospectuses today. But I’m also not leaving you in a place where sickos put carefully crafted threatening objects in your locker. I think my position is . . . not unreasonable.’

  ‘It wasn’t a threat, Mum. It was a bad joke. And you are leaving me there, because I want to stay there.’

  Something strikes me for the first time: Jess is more reluctant to leave her best friends, even the one who psychologically tortured her for a year, than she is to leave the best performing arts school in London. She’s brilliantly talented, but musical theater doesn’t feature in her dreams the way it features in mine. If all her friends moved to a normal sixth form college, she’d probably opt to go with them.

  ‘As long as nothing else happens,’ I say evenly. I’m not conceding defeat forever. Only for now. If I push her any further, Jess will start to sound as if she’s taking Ruby’s side against me, and I can’t cope with that. Not today.

  ‘Hey, Dad!’ She waves at Dan’s bike shop as we drive along the Archway Road. ‘I don’t think he’s there. It looked closed.’

  ‘He’ll be at home. He took Lottie to the orthodontist at lunchtime.’ And decided it wasn’t worth going back to the shop mid-afternoon for only a couple of hours.
I must try not to think this thought later tonight, when I’m chucking coffee down my neck at one a.m., trying to stay awake long enough to make a dent in my Urgent Work list.

  A more useful thing for me to think about is: Who made and planted that music box? If not Ruby, who was with Jess all morning, then who? She must have roped in Bel, Sadie, or both. Or even someone from outside their group of four.

  I can’t just let this stand, let Ruby’s twisted shit escalate. If no one else is going to do something about it—and Racki clearly isn’t—then I will. Tonight, when everyone else is asleep, I’m going to think this through properly and make a plan, while neglecting my work. Normally I neglect it in favor of something more fun: the musical I’m secretly writing. At the moment, I’m stuck on a song. I love what I’ve written so far, but I can’t think of what should come next. I’m trying to tell myself this must also happen to the Great Musical Theater Librettists of our time: Sir Tim Rice, Tim Minchin . . .

  Yeah, right. It definitely doesn’t happen more often to pretend-librettists who, in reality, are bored law professors.

  Maybe it’d help if I changed my name to Tim.

  As I drive, I hum the song as I’ve written it so far. A tune came to me while I was writing the words and, though I know nothing about music, I think it’s pretty good. Silently, in my head, I sing the lyrics, too.

  Gave you a leading role (I wrote the play),

  Gave you a hero’s soul, and lines to say,

  Gave you emotion, gave you strength as well

  But that all vanished when the curtain fell

  So perhaps I should have said this from the start:

  Please think about the one who wrote your part.

  After tonight’s performance, if you can,

  Don’t just go back to being the same old man.

  Give me your word

  That without a costume or a stage

  Give me your word

  That without a script’s highlighted page

  You can come up with a decent line.

  Give me your word.

  I’ve given you enough of mine.

  ‘What’s that tune?’ Jess asks. My heart leaps.

  ‘Why, do you like it?’ Someone might like my work; the first person who’s ever heard any of it. That would be encouraging.

  ‘I dunno. Stop humming, it’s annoying.’

  I bet that never happens to Sir Tim Rice or Tim Minchin. I wonder what they’d do about Ruby Donovan.

  Of course it was her. A long summer holiday’s a feasible amount of time for a spiteful, clever girl to refine her tactics. The music box is Ruby’s big, bold, start-of-term statement, announcing her new MO that’s far less likely to get her into trouble: She arranges for things to happen to Jess that she couldn’t possibly have been responsible for. Then she cries, sympathizes, and gets to enjoy the thrill of secret knowledge while despising Jess for her credulity.

  Most teenage girls, even the most treacherous and bitchy variety, wouldn’t think, Oh, I know what would be cool: a music box with a maimed replica of my victim inside it that will terrify and distress her. Most teenage girls—most people—wouldn’t go that far, however jealous they felt.

  I have no doubt in my mind that Ruby Donovan would go much, much further. As someone who is prepared to go to great lengths myself when I really want something, I instantly recognize the go-too-far people I meet, and Ruby’s definitely one of them. I can see it in her eyes. I wonder if she sees it in mine.

  BRONNIE – Bel’s mum

  I stand well back as the girls rush into the dressing room, their cheeks flushed with exertion, then hover as they take off their dresses, ready to hang them up. I’m glad to see that the girls are acting on Adam’s request to include the new girl—Imogen—in their group. She’s standing with the four of them, her back to Bel, who is unzipping her dress for her. I study her for a moment, wondering if she’s going to be a good fit for their group. In my experience, odd numbers are harder work than even numbers, and the dynamics are obviously going to change. She seems nice enough—long, blond, almost white hair; wide, slightly protruding blue eyes; not as tall as Jess or Sadie but taller than Bel and Ruby. Their chatter is all about whether Adam is going to choose West Side Story, which they’ve just been rehearsing, over My Fair Lady for the end-of-term show. Today it was Jess’s turn to play Maria and she was so good I think she’ll get the part. Much as I would love her to, I don’t think Bel will, although physically, with her long dark hair, she’s the most suited to be Maria. And she does have a lovely voice.

  To be honest, if it hadn’t been for her drama teacher at school, Bel wouldn’t be here. She loved playing in all the school productions but she never had any ambition to be on stage. And although she often had the starring role—she was wonderful as Matilda—it never occurred to me and Carl that she might have a future as an actress. When Mrs. Carter took us aside and suggested that Bel audition for theater school, we were so surprised.

  Carl wasn’t keen on Bel auditioning. He’s a traditionalist, and thinks she should study accountancy. He says it’s a nice job for a girl and that she’ll always find work. I wasn’t sure at first, either. I don’t necessarily think Bel should study accountancy, but the acting profession is a hard one, with its uncertainty and disappointments and no regular timetable, eating at goodness knows what time of the day and staying up all hours. I imagine you have to be quite thick-skinned to survive, and I’m not sure that Bel is. But she wanted to audition so we agreed, telling ourselves she probably wouldn’t get in. That’s when we learned the term stage presence. Apparently, Bel has got it.

  I stoop to retrieve the dress Ruby was wearing from where she left it on the floor, wondering if she does the same at home. I look over to where she’s standing with the others, trying to catch her eye and give her a little reprimand, not so much for myself but because she should have more respect for the costumes. The other girls at least manage to hang theirs on a hook and Bel, bless her, always puts hers on a hanger, trying to make less work for me. But Ruby can be a bit of a diva. She was awful to Jess last year. I didn’t like that Bel seemed to be going along with it but I know she felt intimidated by Ruby.

  I feel something hard in the pocket of Ruby’s dress—it’s a little piece of twisted pink plastic, the missing arm from the mutilated ballerina. I quietly slip it into my own pocket. I’m not sure if I should show it to Adam just yet; now might not be the most opportune moment. What if he summons everyone to his office again? I can just imagine Elise’s reaction if she has to come back in.

  She really put me on the spot when she tried to get me to leave with her the other day. What would Adam have thought if I’d left? You’d think Elise would understand that I’m in an awkward position, being both a parent and a member of staff. But I’m not sure Elise thinks at all, unless it’s about herself and her career. I know it’s stupid, but when I was offered this job I hoped that she and Carolyn might look at me with a little more respect. After all, it’s quite something to go back to work after twenty-two years as a stay-at-home mum. I wouldn’t even mind Carolyn referring to me as wardrobe mistress if I didn’t think she was doing it to make my job seem less important than it is. But in my contract, it says costume designer and seamstress, so that’s what I tell everyone I am. Sometimes I’d like to tell Carolyn how important I am to Adam in other ways. But I can’t go into that, not without endangering everything I hold dear.

  Yes, there is some picking clothes off the floor and a lot of mending, but I don’t mind. I love my job and I’m grateful to Adam for offering it to me. It was after the end-of-term show last year, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I’d volunteered to help with the costumes because I’m quite handy with a needle and Bel told me that Eileen, who was the resident costume designer, was overwhelmed by the number of dresses that needed to be made. If there’d been three brides it would have been fine, but seven was just a few too many. In the event, I ended up making not only the girls’ gingham dresses for the barn dan
ce but also the dresses for the wedding scene at the end. When the show was over, Eileen handed in her notice—I think she was exhausted, poor thing—and Adam offered me her job.

  I’m so glad he did. I’d be dying right now otherwise, what with Bel turning eighteen this year. She could be anywhere next year, off to university or touring with a theater group, depending on how the end-of-year auditions go, and there’ll only be Toby left at home. And in three years’ time, if he follows his two elder brothers to university, all my birds will have flown the nest. What would I do then, if I didn’t have this job?

  Carl couldn’t understand why I wanted to spend so much time at the school. When I told him that I needed something to do now that the children were growing up, he said that I could do the books for his company and save him employing an accountant. But, as I pointed out, that would have been unpaid work, and with Lucas and Jon both at university, we could do with the extra money. And I get two afternoons off a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, so it’s perfect.

  ‘Mum!’ Bel comes running over and I quickly adjust my sweater so she doesn’t see the bulge in my pocket. ‘Sadie is having a sleepover on Friday, can I go?’

  It’s one of those moments when I don’t quite know what to say. I don’t like to be unkind, but I don’t think much of Elise’s parenting skills. She allows Sadie far too much freedom in my view. I’ve noticed dark circles under Sadie’s eyes recently, and when I mentioned it to Bel, she mumbled something about Sadie being allowed to be up at all hours. She looked as if she might be about to tell me something else but I didn’t push it. If there’s something Bel’s worried about, she’ll tell me when she’s ready.

  It’s not the only reason I’m hesitating about the sleepover. Even though Bel is looking at me eagerly, waiting for my answer, I know she doesn’t really like staying away from home. It’s not that she’s clingy, just that she prefers sleeping in her own bed, as many people do.