The Understudy

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘Language,’ I say distractedly, my mind on the tattoo. I’ve seen it somewhere before.

  ‘But why pretend that she self-harms?’ Bel asks, puzzled.

  ‘To get attention. She’s crazy.’ Jess points her finger at her head, miming madness. ‘Did you see the way she was crying when Ruby barely touched her?’

  ‘It’s a really pretty tattoo, though,’ Sadie says. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting one like that.’

  I look around. ‘Where’s Ruby?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Jess shrugs. ‘Shall I go and look for her?’

  ‘No, I’ll go. And keep quiet about what just happened, please. We wouldn’t like Adam to hear about it, would we?’ I add severely.

  I leave them whispering among themselves, wondering what else is going to happen before the day is out. I’d give anything for a cup of tea, but finding Ruby is my priority. She was so upset. It’s not that I condone her behavior—no one should resort to physical violence, no matter what the provocation—but I can’t help feeling sorry for her. She must be feeling so alone, completely abandoned by everyone.

  I check the three toilet blocks but there’s no sign of Ruby. I head for the courtyard, my mind on Imogen’s tattoo, wishing I could remember where I saw it. It was some years back. Maybe at a party I went to, or while I was having my hair done. Hairdressers often have tattoos, don’t they? Wherever it was, it had made a huge impression on me. I loved the image the words conjured up, of a free spirit walking the earth, answerable to nothing and no one, and I remember thinking that if I ever decided to get a tattoo, it would be that one. Not that I’ve ever been a free spirit. Nor will I ever be one, which is quite sad because sometimes, just sometimes, I’d love to tell everyone—Adam, the other mums, even Carl and the children—to sod right off.

  I get to the inner courtyard and see Ruby sitting on the bench where someone sprayed Here lies Ruby Donovan. The words are gone now, helped on their way by some solvent and steel wool, with Bob supplying the elbow grease.

  Even at a distance I can see the tear streaks on Ruby’s face. My heart goes out to her and I hurry over, ready to give her a hug.

  ‘There’s someone on the roof!’ Imogen’s voice rings around the courtyard and I might have thought it was another of her lies if it wasn’t for the urgency behind it. Looking up, I see a slate heading straight for the bench where Ruby is sitting.

  ‘Ruby!’ I cry.

  At the sound of my voice, she raises her head. But because she doesn’t understand the urgency, she doesn’t move. The slate hurtles towards her and, using every fiber in my body, I throw myself at the bench.

  7

  All the Players

  Holly Brown

  TEXT MESSAGES: KENDALL AND GREG

  Kendall: Something’s happened to Ruby.

  Greg: More bullying?

  Kendall: It’s not just bullying. When will you get it?

  Greg: How can I get it? You won’t talk to me.

  Kendall: This isn’t about us, it’s about Ruby. There’s been an accident. I don’t know the details, headmaster was cagey on the phone. I’m going to the school now.

  Greg: Is she hurt?

  Kendall: He said it’s not serious, but she’s upset.

  Greg: Let me know if you need me.

  Kendall: Was that sarcastic?

  Greg: God, Kendall, what do you think of me?

  Kendall: I’ll text you later when I know what’s going on.

  Greg: Why text now, with no solid info? To stress me out? To punish me?

  Kendall: Because you’re still her father.

  Greg: And I’m still your husband. Stop avoiding me. Stop ignoring me.

  Kendall: You’re the one who’s avoiding. I asked what you did with Elise, and you didn’t answer.

  Greg: I’m sure I did.

  Kendall: No, you turned it back on me. Blamed me for moving away. For moving Ruby away. Like it’s my fault you fucked my friend.

  Greg: I didn’t fuck your friend!

  Kendall: You fucked my frenemy. Whatever, I’ll text you later about Ruby.

  KENDALL

  It’s nowhere close to rush hour, but even so, the taxi’s crawling along like a tortoise. I should have taken the Tube. You should always take the Tube. What you shouldn’t do is text your philandering husband in a panic. It never ends well.

  Why couldn’t Adam Racki have just told me over the phone what happened to Ruby, and what kind of shape she’s in now? He basically hung up on me, which tells me he’s scared.

  As he should be. The bench graffiti happened at his school, and he’s done nothing about Imogen, and now Ruby’s had an ‘accident.’ He’s not going to get away with it. And whoever’s terrorizing Ruby isn’t going to get away with it, either. There are no accidents.

  We start to go at a decent clip in one of the designated taxi lanes. That lasts about ten seconds before a bike gets in our way. I feel like screaming. There should be a police escort. I need to get to my baby. She might be injured, she’s definitely upset, and she needs me. I don’t want anyone else with her in that place. It’s not safe. Who knows what she might say?

  ‘Are you going as fast as you can?’ I ask the driver. ‘I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He’s an older gentleman and his tone is studiously patient. It says that everyone’s in a hurry, all the time.

  ‘No, I mean, it’s an emergency. Something’s happened to my daughter.’

  ‘How old is she?’ He sounds more engaged now, though I hadn’t intended it as a conversational overture.

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘And what’s happened?’

  ‘I don’t exactly know.’

  He gives me an odd look in the rearview mirror. How can you not know? his eyebrows say.

  I want to tell him to sod off, as the Brits say. I used to be charmed by all their slang, and the accents, and high tea, and manicured gardens, and brick landmark buildings everywhere. When I first arrived, I’d say things like, ‘The problem with LA is that it has no history.’ But now all I see is the gray and all I feel is the damp. My daughter’s at school surrounded by maniacs and I’m stuck in bloody traffic.

  ‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ he tells me, and I nod so he’ll shut up.

  But part of me agrees with that look he gave me, the one tinged with judgment. It’s my business to know. She’s my child, and she’s nowhere near fine, and it’s my fault. I should have pulled her out of the school already, like Carolyn always threatens to do with Jess. I should have taken her back to the States. No, I should never have brought her to London at all. Greg isn’t right about much, but he may have been right about that. There was no talking to me at the time, though. I’d been high on my post-cancer wisdom, sure that a fresh start would cure all ills. A new environment was supposed to mean a whole new Ruby. It was a place to try out the whole new me.

  For a while after the move, I’d felt vindicated. She’d hooked up with the other girls to form the gang of four, and she seemed so happy. I’d hooked up with the other mums. But then, within months, Ruby was back to her old tricks, targeting Jess, and now she’s being targeted herself.

  The mums can be so self-righteous, taking the slivers of what they think they know about Vee and creating a narrative about Ruby. Of course I had to maintain that Vee’s fall was an accident. I can’t trust them with the truth. I have to hope Ruby realizes the same rule applies to their daughters.

  Ruby took it so much easier on Jess than she had on Vee. That was part of why I leapt to Ruby’s defense with Mr. Racki last year. Because as bad as it looked to him and the other mums, especially Carolyn, I knew that it actually represented an improvement. Ruby had been less manipulative and had exercised greater self-control than with Vee. She’d also picked a much stronger victim this time. Jess can more than hold her own.

  Maybe that’s what this is. Jess is striking back now, and she’s not playing around. This time, Ruby’s the one in danger.

  The cab pulls up in front of OFA
and I thrust way too many bills at the driver before taking the steps two at a time to get inside the building. Racing down the hall and into the office, I stop short when I see who’s at the front desk. What’s Bronnie doing at the computer? Is she just that desperate to be around Adam Racki? I flash to when I came upon them backstage at the revue, and remember thinking that the two of them had been about to go in for a clinch or had just exited one.

  Bronnie looks awful. Her hair is a mess (from Adam’s hands running through it?), her face pink and blotchy (from the press of his stubble against it?). The best description of her expression is a cross between rattled and guilty. When she opens her mouth to speak, nothing comes out.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I say, harsher than I intended. Or perhaps just as harshly, I don’t know anymore.

  ‘I’m just, you know . . .’ She looks around like she’s hoping someone (her lover?) will intervene. ‘Doing some data entry.’

  So that’s what they’re calling it these days?

  Mr. Racki emerges from the inner sanctum of his office and Bronnie hurries out immediately. He’s usually impeccably groomed but now his hair is slightly askew, just like his tweedy scarf. When he clasps my hand, his feels clammy and insubstantial. I get it: He hasn’t got the strength for this job. Hasn’t got the stomach. Carolyn’s known that all along.

  Last year, it was her daughter being bullied, and now it’s mine. Coincidence?

  There are no coincidences, and there are no accidents, much as I wish there were.

  ‘Mrs. Donovan,’ he says, and I note his formality. No lovey or darling today. ‘I’ll take you to Ruby, but I wanted to tell you about the accident first.’

  ‘Could you be brief, please?’ Best to start out polite. If I have to get vicious later, so be it. Kill them with kindness first.

  ‘The school’s been planning to get some roof work done. We’ll obviously move that up and it’ll start right away.’

  So Ruby fell off the roof, is that what he’s saying?

  ‘A slate became dislodged.’ I have the sense that he’s chosen the word ‘dislodged’ with some care. ‘We’re all grateful that Bronnie was there, and she was able to get Ruby to safety. Without Bronnie, it could have been much worse. She’s the kind of brave, quick-thinking employee that we’re so lucky to have here at the Academy.’

  Yes, he’s lucky to have her, all right.

  In light of this information, Bronnie’s behavior seems additionally odd. Why would she have hurried off without any sort of acknowledgment about what had happened to Ruby when she’d actually been there? She sure hadn’t acted like a hero; she’d seemed like a woman with something to hide. It was as if she didn’t even know me, or wished she didn’t.

  And now Adam Racki is using her to try to cover his ass, pretending that Ruby hadn’t been endangered by the school—no, it was quite the contrary! She’d been protected by the headmaster’s most cherished employee.

  Meanwhile, Ruby must have been terrified. A slate had nearly crushed her. She could have died, is what Mr. Racki is telling me.

  ‘How could you have let this happen?’ I say.

  He starts to reach out a hand to me, then thinks better of it and drops it to his side. ‘I am truly sorry. But I can assure you, nothing like this—’

  ‘I need to see my daughter.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Only he doesn’t move. ‘I just really feel—’

  ‘I don’t give a shit how you feel. I need to see my daughter.’

  ‘What I mean is,’ he says quietly, ‘I understand what you’re feeling. More than you know. We’ll talk more later. My door is always open to you, Mrs. Donovan, and to Ruby.’

  He leads me up the hall and knocks on a door. The nurse opens it in her absurdly starched uniform, right out of central casting, and I can see beyond her to where Ruby is sitting on a cot, feet flat on the floor, back ramrod straight, immobile. From this angle, in profile, I can’t tell if she’s eerily composed or catatonic. Whatever it is, it’s unnatural, not Ruby at all.

  ‘It’s your mother,’ the nurse says, and Ruby reanimates. She runs into my arms, sobbing, as the nurse departs. Tears rush into my eyes, too. They’re not just sympathetic, because her feelings are running right through me. Her every fear, her heartbreak, they’ve always been mine, too, in one closed circuit, an unbreakable bond.

  I’m so relieved that she’s alive and safe, and she lets me hold her tighter than she has in I don’t know how long. Then she retracts her head and I see her face. I gasp involuntarily at the sizable bandage on her right cheek. Mr. Racki had said she wasn’t ‘seriously’ injured. This isn’t serious? She’s an actress!

  ‘When the slate crashed,’ he explains, ‘it shattered. There were some shards. The paramedics have already been here and I made sure they knew what sort of school this is. They were very careful in stitching her up.’

  ‘Stitches?’ Done by paramedics, not by a plastic surgeon? I’m filled with horror. The cut must be at least four inches long, based on the size of the gauze, and I can’t estimate how wide, and it’s obviously deep enough to require suturing.

  My baby will be scarred.

  Her career. Her life. For a split second, I’m watching them both go up in smoke.

  Then I notice that Ruby’s watching me, and I know I have to compose myself. I need to be strong for her. ‘I’m so thankful the slate didn’t land on you, and that none of the shards went into your eye. All the damage will be superficial.’

  She laughs with sudden harshness. ‘Who looks beyond the surface, Mom?’ She moves away from me, taking a seat on the nurse’s cot. Her back is concave, like she wants to curl into herself. She wants to disappear.

  I finally take in the whole of her. She must have bled a fair amount—the top of her light blue leotard is mottled red.

  Oh my God, it’s just like the music box. How had I not picked that up sooner? Light blue is Ruby’s color, not Jess’s. That ballerina wasn’t meant to be Jess; all along, it was Ruby. Whatever’s gone on today, it was set in motion weeks ago. Months, maybe.

  What teenager could have done this kind of planning? None that I know, not even Ruby herself.

  But Imogen has never seemed like a teenager. She always seems younger, or older. And there’s something almost . . . otherworldly about her. She’s not precisely there when things are happening; she has alibis (like sitting out in the audience next to me), and yet she’s always nearby, just outside the frame.

  ‘I’ll leave you two alone,’ I hear Mr. Racki say from what seems like very far away but I know is only a few feet behind us. He shuts the door behind him.

  She’s started crying again, noiselessly, soaking the gauze with her tears. Her chestnut hair has broken free of the bun at the nape of neck and it looks wild. She’s hurting so badly, and I wish I knew what to say, how to take it away.

  My heart aches. I know that Ruby’s worries about her appearance aren’t only based on her profession, they’re deep-seated insecurities. She’s always cared immensely about beauty and her perceived lack of it. She’d push the prettiest little girls off the slide or out of the sandbox. In third grade, Ruby wrote a fairy tale about an ugly little girl with a beautiful mom that ended with the little girl drowning in the sea. Her teacher recommended therapy, but Ruby insisted it hadn’t been about her and me, and I believed her. Even then, she was a great actress.

  She’s been fighting so hard this year not to feel inferior to Jess and to make sure that even if she did have those feelings, she didn’t act on them. I know Ruby. Even if the scar is small, she’ll fixate. Her blue eyes, so much like mine, will go right to it, seeking it out, the way she’s always lasered in on her imperfections.

  ‘I’m ruined,’ she chokes out.

  ‘No, you’re not.’ I take the seat beside her on the cot, wanting to hold her again, but something in her posture tells me not to try.

  ‘Don’t pretend, Mom. You know it, too. You were disgusted when you first looked at me.’

 
Why hadn’t Mr. Racki at least warned me about the location of the supposedly minor injury? Then I would have prepared my face; I would have prepared my words. Ruby’s so sensitive, and now she’s saddled with the image of my initial reaction.

  I wasn’t horrified by her; I was terrified of what this could mean. But I can’t tell her that, because we don’t yet know what it means. We don’t know how bad any of this will be.

  ‘I was angry with the school for letting this happen, that’s all,’ I say. ‘I could never, ever be disgusted by you.’

  She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t believe me.

  ‘It must be hard to think clearly when you’re still in shock from the accident.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident. Someone was on the roof just before the slate crashed down where I was sitting on the bench.’

  I’d thought the situation was suspicious, that it was more than an accident, but somehow, I hadn’t imagined this. If a person had deliberately pushed the slate, knowing Ruby was directly below . . .

  Someone had tried to kill her.

  ‘Who was it?’ I ask.

  ‘Imogen couldn’t tell. It all happened so fast.’

  ‘Imogen was there?’ As in, she was the witness, not the suspect?

  ‘She called out that someone was up on the roof, and then Mrs. Richardson pushed me out of the way. Imogen saved my life.’ I wish she didn’t sound so gloomy about that fact.

  But we can handle that later. She’ll sleep in my bed, we’ll watch movies and eat her favorite junk food, I’ll paint her nails. For now, I need the details. ‘Did anyone else see the person up on the roof?’

  ‘Only Imogen. Headmaster Racki started to call the police and Imogen took it back. She said it had just been a flash of something in her peripheral vision, not an actual person.’

  So Imogen didn’t want the police called. I wouldn’t put it past her to have a juvenile record. This is a girl who enjoys telling people her perfectly healthy father is dying. But she’s also the girl who saved Ruby’s life. You don’t always get to pick your heroes.