Theatrical Read online

  “Can you take this one out? I’ll bring out the next lot.”

  As she heads back into the rehearsal room, I start lining up the second batch of mugs. Waiting for the kettle to reboil, I keep thinking back to Luke on that stage. It’s incredible the way actors can do that. It’s not like when you see them “acting” – and believe me, I’ve seen plenty of that at the Square Globe – but when they completely disappear and you forget they have another name, another life. You forget that they exist at all outside that time and space, and you tell yourself that you know them; that if you met them in the street you could be friends with them…and then they come offstage and the mask drops and they put on their own names again, take back their real lives, and you realize that you never knew them at all. You only saw what they wanted you to see.

  Tommy spends the rest of the day snarling at everyone. Not only is he sulking about Luke stepping in for him earlier, but according to George (who, like all wardrobe and make-up crew, knows everything), the phone call with his manager was yet another bit of bad news: a meeting he had with the head of a studio about getting into producing didn’t go as well as he’d thought, apparently. This hasn’t helped his mood, so along with everyone else I make a point of keeping out of his way as much as possible.

  And Luke? He leaves as quietly as he slipped in and out of Tommy’s shoes, and when I turn around midway through a scene, he’s vanished. But while I’m straightening the room ready for the morning, I spot something on the floor under his chair. It’s Luke’s script. What is it with this guy and keeping hold of his stuff? I flick through it, even though I have my own well-thumbed copy that I can probably see with my eyes shut by now. Like The History Boys, it’s full of pencil annotations in the margins; here and there words are underlined and circled. He’s studying it – picking it apart and working out how to fold it back together again.

  “He’s not forgotten that one too, has he? Fabulous actor, especially for a first-year, but you can tell he’s a student – he’d forget his skull if it wasn’t attached.” Amy nods at the script as she passes my bag across. She looks as tired as I feel…or maybe I look as tired as she feels. It’s hard to say but, either way, I’m tired.

  “Last day in the rehearsal room tomorrow,” she says. “And then we’re into the Earl’s.”

  Already my mind is picturing the narrow corridor I’ve walked along so many times in my dreams since that birthday. This is a problem, because Amy is actually still talking to me. I haul my brain back into the rehearsal room and try to focus on what she’s saying.

  “…lot more to do after the get-in, when we’ve got access to the whole theatre. I’ll need you to familiarize yourself with the layout as quickly as you can – I know that’s a lot to ask, because it’s a bit of a warren backstage, but you’ll get the hang of it. It’s the same kind of thing you’ve done plenty of times before. Just…bigger.”

  I nod. It’s a theatre, and I know theatre all the way down to my bones. How hard can it be?

  Instead of heading home at the end of the day, I peel George away from his wig catalogues. “Enough hair. Come on, we’re going.”

  “Going where?” He frowns at me.

  “Cinema. I’m meeting a couple of friends from the Square Globe, and you’re coming.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes. Stop looking at the hair, George.”

  “I just…”

  “You’re coming.”

  He doesn’t put up a fight as we head for the bus stop.

  Just for once, I don’t have to worry about whether Mum’s going to pop her head out of her studio when I get home and ask how I’m doing: a couple of her RCD (Red Carpet Dress) commissions are almost finished and have, over the last forty-eight hours, gradually taken over the entire house. Every flat surface is covered in lace or gold braid, and Dad complained he actually found bugle beads in his porridge yesterday morning. So even if I was ready to go home, I don’t think home is quite ready for me yet – not unless I want to be handed a pair of pinking shears or asked to help pin fifteen metres of silver and black netting together. Which means I’m free. For a bit, anyway.

  Tommy’s face stares out at me from the poster on the side of the bus stop. The Earl’s Theatre is proud to present Tommy Knight in his stage debut…

  “Like you’ve not had enough of looking at that face for one day,” George says as the bus pulls in.

  “Quite.”

  “Hey! Hope! Over here!”

  I look down the street and see a group of familiar faces waiting for us: the backstage crew from the Square. It’s so good to see them that, at first, I almost wonder whether they’re actually some weird kind of Tommy-induced stress hallucination, but no – they really are there.

  “Come on!” Priya stamps her feet impatiently. “We’ll miss the start – you’ve taken ages!”

  “Sorry. Bus.”

  “You always say that when you’re late, and I know for a fact it’s only true half the time.” She gives me a gentle shove, then leans around me to smile at George. “Hi!”

  “You remember George? Merchant of Venice?”

  It turns out almost all of them remember George – particularly Priya, who keeps smiling at him when she thinks nobody’s looking.

  We pile into the tiny cinema lobby with its old-fashioned box-office window, get our tickets and scramble up the spiral chrome staircase to the second screen on the top floor. Funnily enough, this used to be a theatre too, built in the 1930s. Even though it’s been a cinema since the sixties, it still feels theatre-y inside, like the magic hasn’t quite worn off and never will – which is probably why it’s one of my favourite places outside an actual theatre.

  At the front of the group, Orson mutters something about popcorn and Priya groans.

  “Can you not?”

  “We’ve still got two minutes – I’ll go,” I say. I’m already at the back – and by the time Orson squeezes down the narrow stairs past everybody, we’ll all have missed the beginning.

  Orson peers around the others. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. It’s fine – just don’t ask for anything difficult.”

  “Can you get a large bucket of salted?”

  “Are you dreaming?” Priya shakes her head. “Sweet.”

  It’s an old argument, and there’s only one solution.

  “How about I get a mixed one? Sweet and salty.”

  Orson grumbles, but Priya shushes him, and as I duck back down the stairs to the lobby, I hear her telling him to live dangerously once in a while. Seeing as Orson is normally the one in charge of hauling on ropes at the Square Globe – and more than once has nearly got dragged across the stage when he wasn’t paying attention – that’s more than a little ironic.

  There are only a few people ahead of me in the queue, which is good. I don’t really want to miss the start either – but if I’ve picked up anything from two years of backstage work at the Square, it’s that nobody gets anywhere unless they’re part of the team. The actors would be standing on an empty stage in the dark, the costume department would be making clothes nobody will ever wear and the lighting department might as well be flashing an SOS in Morse code into the night sky. So this is me taking one for the team. Especially as the queue doesn’t seem to be moving along anywhere near as quickly as it should be…

  The problem is the guy at the front, who’s got the concession seller looking seriously confused. Like the person in front of me, and the woman who has just joined the queue behind me, I crane my neck as discreetly as possible to listen in on the conversation.

  “…Mix them up?” the girl behind the till is saying. She’s holding a large empty popcorn box in one hand, and something else I can’t see in the other. “But what would you do that for?” she asks. The guy says something I don’t hear, but she laughs and shakes her head, then dunks the box into the popcorn, pulling it out three-quarters full. She rests it on the glass counter while she opens a large bag of Maltesers which she shakes into the box.
To finish the whole thing off, she sprinkles another scoop of popcorn over the top and hands the abomination over. As one, the queue gasp. Oblivious, the guy walks off with his popcorn in the direction of the stairs. But just before he disappears behind the banners and posters that decorate the outside of the spiral, I catch sight of a familiar profile: a straight nose, lowered towards the popcorn he’s carrying and trying not to spill. Narrow shoulders and dirty blond hair. My heart skips. Luke.

  No. I must be imagining it.

  “Who would do that to a tub of popcorn?” whispers the woman behind me.

  “Someone with no soul,” I hiss back.

  By the time I get my family-sized bucket of mixed salted and sweet popcorn and scramble back up the stairs, there’s no sign of Luke and the trailers are almost finished. I pick my way along the narrow row of seats and drop into an empty space next to George.

  “Took you long enough,” he whispers, carefully lifting the popcorn out of my hands and passing it down the row to Orson, who is busy making excited gimme gimme noises.

  “Some weirdo in the queue was getting fancy with his snack choices.”

  As Orson passes out handfuls of popcorn, I sink back into my seat and let myself fall into the film on the screen.

  Outside, we all pull on coats and make promises to meet up soon. A thick mist has come up from the river while we were inside and there’s a damp chill in the air. Priya puts her hands on my shoulders and looks me in the eyes. “I know you can’t tell me much, but it’s going okay, right?”

  “Yes.” I nod vigorously. “It. Is. Great.”

  “And what about your mystery script guy – how’s that—”

  I cut her off by suddenly discovering I have popcorn stuck in my throat and coughing loudly.

  She rolls her eyes but smiles anyway. “Oh, riiiiiight. I get it.”

  “We miss you!” Orson bellows into my ear, and the whole bunch of them take this as an excuse to mob me, crowding round and laughing.

  When I fight my way out, George slings a tentative arm around me in a half-hug and says he’ll see me tomorrow. As I head up the road towards the bus stop, I see yet another poster of Tommy’s glowering face (he really is everywhere) and my stomach churns… It only stops when I spot the back of Luke’s head further along the road, his hair catching the light of every street lamp he passes under. I quicken my pace. It has to be him. Has to be. There can’t be many people who look like him wandering around – not in a town like this. Also, I want to ask: quite apart from what kind of monster really could do that to popcorn, was it sweet or salted?

  But before I can get very far, he turns down a side street and disappears into the mist. And even though I walk a little faster, peering into the fog, by the time I get to the street lamp where the alley joins another road, there’s no sign of him. I pull my coat a little tighter around me and walk home.

  Mum’s studio door is ajar and opera seeps out into the hall, competing with the radio in the kitchen.

  “I’m home – I’m just going up to my room!”

  I wait at the bottom of the stairs for a second, but both my parents are absorbed in their own worlds. That’s no bad thing right now: I’m suddenly so tired that the insides of my bones hurt and every time I blink it feels like someone’s thrown a handful of grit into my eyes. I need to have a lie down for a few minutes, quarter of an hour or something, and get my head together.

  And even though I don’t actually mean to, even though I haven’t had dinner yet (unless a shared bucket of popcorn counts) and there’s the schoolwork I’ve missed that Priya’s been emailing over, and stuff to do…my eyes are too heavy. Not just my eyes, either, my whole body’s too heavy, and my bed is too comfortable.

  As my eyes close, I see one last flash of tropical blue eyes and a smiling face, turned half-away from me to whisper into Juliet’s ear.

  And as everything slides into the dark, Luke’s eyes look up and lock onto mine.

  No sooner have I walked into the rehearsal room on Thursday than Amy, “just for fun”, gives me a section of the script to mark up with some new light and sound cues based on a meeting Rick had with the head techs yesterday evening.

  Amy’s idea of fun and mine do not overlap.

  After watching me scratch my head for a while, she drops into a crouch beside my chair, lowering her voice to a whisper so she doesn’t disturb the rhythm of the rehearsal behind her. “How are you getting on?”

  “Not great,” I sigh, holding up the book so she can see it.

  She runs a finger down the page and stops. “What’s this one?” she asks, tapping the horrific tangle of pencil scribbles midway down.

  “I don’t know?”

  “Hope.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  She purses her lips. “Yes, you can. Take it one cue at a time.”

  “But there’s so many, and they’re all happening at…”

  The room has gone very quiet.

  Too quiet.

  I look round, and realize the rehearsal has stopped – and Tommy is staring at me. I smile back at him. Nothing happens – and then he sighs. “Line?”

  He’s forgotten his line and needs a prompt. Not surprising, really – the first thing Rick announced this morning was that this scene needs completely reworking. So between the new blocking and everything else they’re tinkering with, it’s a miracle no one’s needed prompting until now. It was a complicated enough scene as it was…

  I flick back to the current page.

  “Line!” Standing in the middle of the taped-off stage area, he looks like he’s about to stamp his foot.

  “No,” I call back – and I can actually see the shocked look on his face.

  He tries again. “Line, please?”

  Something weird is happening. “No.”

  “Line. Please.”

  “No!”

  From where I’m sitting, I can see the back of Rick’s shoulders trembling.

  Tommy walks right off the imaginary stage and marches over to me, standing with one hand on his hip, every bit of him the star. “Do you think this is a game? Do you? Because let me tell you – it isn’t. This is a professional working environment, not somewhere you get to…to…to play at being a grown-up. And while you think you’re being clever, you’re holding everyone up.”

  Rick has put his face in his hands and is making a peculiar snorting noise, shoulders now shaking so hard it’s a wonder his arms don’t drop off. Next to him, Nina is focusing very, very hard on her notepad – but even I can see her smiling.

  When I finally manage to get enough of a grip to speak, my voice comes out loud and clear, carrying right across the rehearsal room.

  “The line, Tommy, is ‘No’.”

  Absolute silence descends. Nobody moves, nobody speaks, nobody even breathes. All eyes are on Tommy (and me), waiting to see how he’ll respond to this.

  He opens his mouth once, then closes it again. His eyes narrow and he tips his head ever so slightly to one side…and I can’t help but remember the look he gave me on my first day, when he stole the sugar from the kitchen.

  “Right. Of course.”

  And without warning, his face cracks into that enormous bright smile, and he nods at me and spins on his heel, striding back over to the stage and rubbing his hands together with a quick “Shall we pick it up?” to Rick as he passes.

  All I can do is sit there, blinking at him.

  “What was that?”

  George has slipped quietly into the chair behind mine, and his whisper is both so dramatic and so sudden that I actually twitch. The cues I’m holding on my lap flop to the floor and papers scatter around my feet.

  “Jesus. Don’t do that!”

  “Sorry.” He is clearly not even slightly sorry. “But what happened there?”

  “I gave him his line.” I shrug, scrabbling for the pages. One seems to have wedged itself under the leg of my chair; I’m not quite sure how that’s physically possible, but it’s managed to do it an
yway. I stand up and scoot it along the floor with my toe.

  “You didn’t just give him his line. You gave him a spanking in front of the whole company.”

  “I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you?”

  Somewhere in the middle of the fading terror of telling Tommy Knight he’s wrong, a glimmer of triumph shines brightly out at me. Because I got it right.

  “No,” he says. “You just schooled Tommy Knight in theatre.”

  Someone had to, I think – and then wonder where the hell that came from… Right before I see who’s standing just inside the door, talking to Amy, and wonder where he came from. We’re due to finally run his Lancelot scene today but I just wasn’t ready.

  George turns in his seat to follow my gaze.

  “Oh, reeeeeeeally…?” He draws out the “really” so it lasts until Luke has covered most of the distance between us and arrives to find me hissing at George to piss off.

  He stops, waiting to see if we’ve finished talking. “Sorry, am I interrupting, or…?”

  “No. No, George was just going, weren’t you, George?”

  George beams at me. “I was?”

  “Yes. You were. Going. Right?”

  “Oh. Oh. Ohhhhh. Yes, I was going. Hair charts to study. And Tommy’s hair! I get to help touch up his roots!”

  “GOODBYE, GEORGE.”

  He takes the hint and wanders off, humming a song from Matilda.

  Luke is still standing there, one hand tucked into the pocket of his ripped jeans. “So. Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Look, I can’t quite believe I’m this dense, but I think I left my script behind. Again. My actual script, I mean.”

  “You did.”

  “I was hoping maybe you’d found it? Seeing as you found the last one, I mean.” He stops abruptly.

  I lean over and fish his script out of my bag, holding it out to him.

  He takes it, almost hesitantly. “Thanks.” Maybe I’m imagining it, but this time when our fingers touch as he takes it, his skin seems to rest against mine just a little longer than it did before.