Theatrical Read online

  Tommy rests his hands on his hips and scuffs the soft toe of his trainer against the floor. “It’s before, Rick,” he sighs. “Before.”

  “Let’s just check, shall we?” Rick’s voice sounds like it could dissolve steel…and with a sinking feeling, I realize that I can’t answer.

  I don’t know.

  I’ve written down the movement…but I’ve written it literally alongside the line. I can’t tell whether he’s supposed to kick the chair before he speaks, after he speaks…or even while he’s doing it.

  Everyone is watching me and everyone is waiting.

  Don’t panic, Hope. Don’t panic.

  I look at the line again. It’s short – very short. If he kicks the chair beforehand, he’ll risk the sound of the chair falling drowning out his voice, and that’s not a decision Tommy would ever make. But if he kicks it after, it changes the read of the line – instead of it being angry, it’s a bit…helpless.

  I make up my mind.

  “During the line,” I say – and my voice is clearer and sharper than I expected. I actually sound like I know what I’m talking about. “He kicks it mid-line.”

  Rick purses his lips and looks down at his script, checking his own notes, then leans over and looks at Nina’s. She nods, and he waves a hand at Tommy.

  “There you are then. Let’s go again, from ‘tomorrow won’t matter’, please.”

  Nina gives me a small wink, then a thumbs up. “Good call,” she whispers – and I think she means it. I nod and shuffle a couple of script pages, trying to look cool about it, but really I want to scream with joy. I got it right. My first day, and I made a good call. It makes me happy, right until I look up and see Tommy staring at me. His eyes are two icy-cold searchlights, boring straight into me, and I can feel the chill creeping across my skin.

  Rick might well be terrifying…but something tells me this is the brother you don’t want to cross.

  And I think I just did.

  By the time we get to the end of the day, it feels like I’ve been there for years. I don’t quite understand how the clock on the rehearsal room wall can only say 4.30 p.m.: I would have guessed closer to midnight. I’m knackered from the sheer fear of messing up – everything is so intense, so much more than I was expecting. Or ready for. On top of that, my fingers ache from making note after note after note on the script; from sketching arrows around little pencil boxes, rubbing them out and then redrawing as Rick and the actors work out the movements of characters. I’ve lost count of the cups of tea I’ve made – but somehow, I’ve not managed to drink a single one.

  George obviously feels the same; when I look over to the table I saw him at earlier with the head of wardrobe at the Earl’s, he’s slumped forward over a stack of fabric samples. It looks like he may be trying to drown himself in them. Or possibly eat them. Mum would love to hear all about that… but no. A tiny warning flare goes off inside my brain. No telling Mum, because that will require Explanations. No telling Mum anything.

  “How was that?” Amy straightens the last chair around the makeshift stage as I gather up the last batch of mugs.

  “It was…” I stop. It was what, exactly? Exhausting? Draining? Harder work than I ever imagined during all those times sitting in my folding chair on the floor of the Square Globe, dreaming about what a real rehearsal room must be like?

  It was.

  And it was incredible.

  Amy smiles, spiriting a roll of bright green gaffer tape away into one of her many pockets. “I know that look.” She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear and folds her arms, studying me as I stand there with my hands full of other people’s tea mugs. “You’re wondering what you’ve got yourself into.”

  “No, no. Not at all.” Although I kind of am, a bit. Not that I’m going to actually say that out loud.

  “Hope?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I give you a piece of advice?”

  “Sure.” I shift my grip on the mugs and they rattle alarmingly.

  “Don’t pretend, okay?”

  “Pretend?”

  “Doing this, you’re surrounded by people who pretend for a living. It’s their job. Leave it to them. Your job is to tell the truth, and make them better.”

  I stand there with my mugs, staring at her. What does that even mean?

  Across the room, George seems to have collected both himself and his stuff together, and he gives me a wave as he heads for the door. I half-wave the mugs back, and Amy nods at him before turning back to me. “You don’t have to pretend it’s not hard,” she says, holding out a hand for one batch of mugs. “It is hard. It’s a hard job, and not everyone can do it. That’s why you got it and not someone else. Because I know you’ve got what it takes.”

  We’re the only people left in the rehearsal room – everyone else has drifted away to catch buses or run lines or…do whatever they do. At the Square, we’d all clear up together and then pile out of the side door into the coffee shop across the road to pick over the minor triumphs and tragedies of every rehearsal. I wonder what they’re doing right now. Priya’s probably just arriving there after school with all the others – Orson and Amelie and Matt and Riz – everybody I know. I could always go over there on my way home…

  But then they’ll all ask me, won’t they?

  Priya knows what I’m doing because she needs to. She’s the only one of my friends who Mum really knows, and if I can trust anyone to cover for me, it’s Priya. Just because Mum doesn’t know any of the others, however, doesn’t mean that what I’m actually doing couldn’t get back to her if I told them…so I’m not telling anyone. Not unless I have to. I’m just going to keep my head down and hope. It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong, anyway. I just want to do this my own way.

  Outside, I hear the roar of a motorbike starting up.

  Tommy. My whole scalp goes cold just thinking about him. I thought I’d be excited, working with someone like him, but it turns out excited isn’t quite the right word – unless, of course, you’d be excited to be juggling a live hand grenade, a shark and a very expensive crystal vase. Because everything about Tommy Knight feels like an unexploded bomb.

  “You can head out if you like. I’ll load this lot into the dishwasher and switch off.”

  “Okay.” I nod, grateful to be relieved of duty.

  “You did well, you know. That was one hell of a first day.”

  I meet her gaze and she smiles. “Thanks.”

  “See you tomorrow. Can you be here for nine in the morning? I want to take you through a few things before we start the run-through… Although,” she adds with a sigh, “judging by today’s performance it’ll be more of a stumble-through. We’re having some trouble getting the timings for one of the stage illusions right, so it looks like we’ll need to work on that some more before we move into the theatre for the last few rehearsals. Still, at least we’ve got plenty of time to get it down.”

  I try not to laugh – and she sees it.

  “It’s okay to laugh. You’re right to. Time is never a theatre crew’s friend. Besides, it’s not life and death. It’s only theatre…”

  Only theatre? How can she say that? How could anyone?

  “And we’ll get it done. It’ll all come together in the end. That’s the real magic.” She nudges the kitchen door open with her foot – then stops partway through. “Don’t tell anyone I said that, though. If you do, they’ll all start to relax, and then where will we be?” She winks and slips through the door, letting it swing shut behind her and leaving me alone in the main room.

  “You did well, you know. That was one hell of a first day.”

  In the empty rehearsal space, I hear her voice in my head as clearly as though she’s right next to me and saying it again – only this time, I don’t even try to hide my smile.

  I chuck my script into the top of the hideous granny-trolley – now stuffed with all the papers and folders Amy gave me earlier – and tip it forward, wheeling it behind me. It squea
ks, and even on wheels it still weighs a ton. I have so much reading to do – but all I can think about now is getting home and lying face down on my bed until morning.

  Perhaps if I open a couple of the folders and lie on those, the information will somehow…sink in by osmosis or something?

  On my way out, something on the floor catches my eye. Or the wheel of my elegant trolley, at least.

  It’s a book. A script.

  I lean over and pick it up. The History Boys. That guy must have dropped it. I flip through the pages, skimming for a name – anything. There’s a slip of paper with a scribbled note about preparing a scene; something about an assignment. Whoever owns this takes their script prep seriously – alongside the lines are careful pencil annotations: symbols, mostly, and markers for breaths and emphasis or the occasional query. I read a couple of the lines again, following the notes, rather than the way I’d read it.

  It sounds like someone else’s voice, someone just over my shoulder, talking to me. It feels like a conversation between the two of us, private and quiet. I can hear them in my head, even if I can’t see them – and even if I don’t know what their name is, I know who they are.

  And they have the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.

  I close the book, and I’m about to leave it on the nearest chair, but…it’s got all those notes in it. If it were me, I’d hate to lose them.

  I look back at the trolley. If only my notes were as easily portable as the script.

  In the end, I slip the book into the trolley and wrangle it out of the rehearsal room, down the street to the bus stop – it’s only when I’m suddenly disappointed not to see the script’s owner that I even realize I was sort of hoping he’d be there. A different, older man already waiting stares at me, which makes me mildly paranoid until I see it’s my glamorous travelling companion he’s looking at. I don’t blame him – it’s the kind of thing that should be stared at. Preferably in a museum.

  Sitting on the bench at the bus stop, I send a photo of the trolley to Priya with the caption New Best Friend. It feels strange to be doing this without her – although I’m not really doing it without her, because straight away she pings back a whole row of question marks, and then:

  Nice. Meet any actual humans, or is it an all-trolley production?

  A few. Make-up & wardrobe intern, George. Filled in at Merchant of Venice?

  FAMOUS humans. As in famous actor-y sort of humans? Plus: assume you didn’t run away from RH this time?

  What was it Amy said? Knowledge is power…and discretion is everything. Discretion and a signed non-disclosure agreement.

  Funny. RH super-intimidating, but no other famous humans today.

  Another little white lie. Great. Somehow fibbing to Priya feels worse than doing it to Mum – maybe because she already knows so much. I’ll be able to tell her properly about Tommy another time, but for now she’ll just have to wait.

  But when the bus finally trundles around the corner and I scramble on with my phone and my trolley, it’s not Priya or Tommy on my mind – it’s still blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and wondering who he is.

  Mum is in her studio when I get in, so I shove the trolley under the stairs and stick my head around her half-open door. My mother has apparently been eaten by several metres of red silk, which cover the floor, the worktable and finish off draped around the wooden dressmaking mannequin in the corner. All I can see of her is the top of her head and a hand.

  “Are you winning?” I ask.

  “You’re home!” The top of the silk is yanked down, and her face appears over the top of it. It’s really, really unsettling. “How was it?”

  “How was what?”

  “Your work experience at the office.” She blinks at me. “Honestly, if you wanted to get some experience, why didn’t you just ask me? You could have worked for me…”

  “Uh, no thanks. And I’m an intern, not a work experience…experiencer.”

  “Or – as I was about to say – I could have spoken to someone for you. An editor – or if you really wanted marketing, I could have called Demet at the Royal Opera House…”

  She would have, too. She would have, because she wants to help. It would never once occur to her that whatever I did after that phone call, however good I was, to everyone I met or spoke to or worked with, I would always just be “Miriam’s kid”. I shake my head. It’s never going to happen. Not since a director at the Square Globe heard my mother’s name, looked me up and down, narrowed his eyes and said, “Well, we all know why you’re here, don’t we?”

  Of course I knew why I was there – because I didn’t want to be anywhere else – and I didn’t understand why he sneered when I told him that. It wasn’t until later that I realized what he really meant.

  Mum’s awards gleam on the shelf at the back of the room, propping up a stack of fashion magazines. “No, it’s fine. Really. This is good – they needed help in the back office anyway,” I say.

  But she’s already gone back under the silk – I can hear her humming. I pull the door shut after me and turn back to the stairs where my trolley, stuffed with rehearsal notes, schedules, list templates, profiles and script sheets is waiting. I eye it warily, and it eyes me right back.

  “All right then. Let’s do this.”

  The trolley does not make the return trip to the rehearsal room in the morning. Instead, I’ve sorted all my piles of paperwork, taken photos of the non-essential ones on my phone and reorganized the most important ones into a single lever-arch folder which is safely tucked into my backpack – along with an emergency supply of sugar. I never want to hand Rick Hillier a sugarless tea again as long as I live, not after the withering look he gave me. The trolley, meanwhile, has retired. By which I mean I shoved it to the back of the hall cupboard and hid it under a bunch of my sisters’ ancient, abandoned sports kit.

  As it turns out, Tuesday is much like Monday, only with more tea-making, more note-taking and a lot more rubbing out. After one particularly heated scene run-through, there’s so much crossing-out and so many rubbed holes in the paper that I give up on three pages of script I’ve been using and just go to photocopy new ones at the machine in the lobby. It’s the only time I get to see the outside of the rehearsal room, through slightly grubby glass.

  George, when I catch him over lunch, isn’t doing much better.

  “I spent two hours last night making up one of these shoulder-bag things to impress Jonna, who’s in charge of wardrobe – and when I finished, guess what…? Half of it was inside out.”

  “Is that part of the internship, making stuff? And how can only half of it be inside out?” I gulp down a segment of orange, trying not to dribble juice down my chin…because even though I’m mostly listening to George’s tales of sewing woe, I’ve also spotted Blond Guy – and he keeps glancing over at us. It’s only for a second: a quick flick of those blue eyes, a shift of his shoulders and then he looks away again before he thinks I notice.

  But I do notice.

  Just like I notice that he chooses the exact moment I’m drooling juice at George and wiping my chin to look again.

  When I sneak another glance back over at him, he’s already staring into his script. Because the thing is, I keep looking at him, too.

  “You aren’t really listening, are you?”

  “What? No. Yes. I am absolutely listening.”

  “You’re not. You’re looking at what’s-his-face over there. I’m looking at you looking at him…looking at you.”

  I fold my orange peel together and squeeze it between my fingers. The air suddenly smells like Christmas.

  “He’s not looking at me.”

  Except, when I take a chance at one more look, he is. Our eyes meet and they hold for the length of a single breath…and then he breaks away. I want to kick myself for not smiling at him.

  “Tell me who he is and I’ll give you his inside leg measurement,” George whispers, fanning himself suggestively with his notebook. I pull a face at him, and
toss my orange peel into the bin.

  “Oh, come on. You must have looked him up. Haven’t you got all the casting files in that monster heap of paperwork?”

  “I wouldn’t do that!” I try to look offended. “It would be so unprofessional to look through everyone’s details just to—”

  “You couldn’t find him, could you?” George cuts me off with a melodramatic roll of his eyes.

  I shake my head. “Nope. There’s a couple that don’t have headshot photos attached – the ones who haven’t been in anything professional before, mostly. He must be one of them.”

  I run through the shortlist of faceless names in my head. He doesn’t look like a Tony, or an Orran. I suppose he could be a Harry, or maybe a Luke…but right now, I kind of like the mystery. The Mystery History Boy.

  Whatever his name is, I haven’t seen him run any lines yet – not that it’s a surprise really. Today’s focus is still Tommy, and I’ve heard more than one actor mutter about whether they were actually needed for another day of Tommy-watching. Needed or not, it was Amy who signed them all in – so I have no clue about who this guy is playing, or even what his name is. But I do have his History Boys script in my bag, don’t I? I just need to find the right time to give it back to him, and try actually speaking to him…which might take a bit of a run-up, considering I couldn’t even manage to smile at him a minute ago.

  I shake my head thoughtfully – and even if George isn’t listening, I say it anyway. “I don’t know his name. Not yet.”

  “And then, right, Bronwen goes for this big note – and I’m talking proper jazz hands. No idea where she got that idea from…”

  “Uh-huh.” I roll over on my bed, shifting the pencil from behind my ear and pulling the script with me. Priya’s voice sounds tinny down the phone.

  “And then…” There’s a sound midway between a snort and a giggle. “She opens her mouth, takes a deep breath…and sneezes. Right in the middle of the note.”

  “Uh-huh.” I doodle a row of footlights across the bottom of my page. It’s not that I don’t want to listen to Priya’s blow-by-blow update of the show – I do – but she isn’t really calling to tell me about her day. She’s calling to hear about mine – and I can’t tell her.