Theatrical Read online

  My cheeks feel hot in the cool of the room; under the warmth of his blue, blue gaze.

  The gaze that I couldn’t stop picturing as I drifted off into sleep last night.

  I’m still holding the script. I’m making this weird.

  It shouldn’t be weird. It’s not weird.

  I let go of the script – and somehow, at the exact same moment, his grip on it loosens and it falls to the floor between us.

  “Ooops – sorry…” And he bends to pick it up – at exactly the same time I do. Our heads collide halfway down with a tooth-rattling thud. “Wow, is Tommy so threatened that he’s paying you to put me out of commission?” He takes the script again – properly this time – as I rub my throbbing head.

  “I think I probably came out of that one worse.”

  He doesn’t walk off. I was expecting him to walk off, but he hasn’t. “Do you…do…do you act?” At first it’s hard to tell whether he’s talking to me or to himself, as he’s looking at the floor – but he waits, and when I don’t answer, he looks up and it’s obvious he meant me.

  On the stage, he moves closer to her, his hand sliding down her side, his arm wrapping around her waist and drawing her in…his lips almost brushing her cheek…

  Was that only two days ago? Because since then, I seriously haven’t been able to get him out of my head, and it feels like he’s been in there for ever. I keep seeing him inside my mind, keep hearing his voice speaking Jamie’s lines over and over and over. It’s so stupid because I barely know him…but I feel like I do.

  “I…? Do…act?”

  I have lost the ability to form sentences that make sense.

  “You know, theatre. Do you act?”

  “Ha!” My laugh is so loud that half the company look round to see what’s going on.

  He looks at me weirdly. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes. Sorry. I was…I had something stuck in my throat there. No. Not an actor. No way. I just…really like theatre. I like seeing how it fits together.”

  “Me too,” he says quietly.

  I try to be very interested in the order of my sheets, shuffling them busily.

  I look up.

  Luke is still there. Still waiting.

  “I was wondering,” he says…and now I really do have something stuck in my throat and I think it might be my heart. I have to swallow really hard to make sure it doesn’t climb any higher and end up in my actual mouth.

  “Mmm-hmm?”

  “Have you got a minute?”

  I stick the end of my pencil in my mouth, hoping I look thoughtful.

  “Mmm-hmm.” It comes out a full octave higher than the last one.

  “There’s a section I just can’t seem to get right – there’s a phrase in the middle and it’s throwing the rest of the line out. I’m worried the more times I go over it, the worse it’s getting.”

  The inside of my mouth tastes like pencil sharpenings. I take the pencil out of my mouth and pretend not to notice the toothmarks I’ve left in it.

  “Sure – no problem. When do you want me to…um…help?”

  There’s a cackle from the row of seats behind Luke. George. Luke doesn’t seem to hear, and screws up his nose. “Well, if you’ve got time now, that would be great. I really want to nail it before Rick sees.”

  “Sure. Sure, sure, sure. Yep. Can do, can doooo…” I make myself stop before George – who I am confident is hiding behind a chair and listening gleefully to every single word – has some kind of accident. “What scene was it again?” I reach for my folder, but instead he simply hands his script to me. The pages are warm from his touch.

  “It’s the scene between Lancelot and Lizzie right before Lancelot’s fight with Jamie.”

  Of course it is. Flipping through the pages and nodding, I wonder exactly how I’m going to manage this – there is only one scene between just Lancelot and Lizzie in the entire production. And it’s the one where he tells her he loves her. Which does not make this awkward at all.

  “Okay. Got it. Great.” I put on my serious script-face, the one Priya says always makes me look like I’m about to sneeze. “Ready when you are.”

  He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes as he starts, feeling his way into the lines. He’s right: he hasn’t got them yet – not quite. It’s not that he doesn’t know the words, more that they sound like a script, like something he’s learned rather than something he’s saying for the very first time, something he’s saying because he needs to. He stumbles in the middle of a sentence; hesitates, corrects himself and frowns as he picks up the thread again.

  There’s a faint line through one of his eyebrows – it looks like a scar. How did he get it, and when? Climbing a tree when he was a kid? In a football match or falling off a bike? In a fight? In a stage fight? Five different images of him flicker through my mind, one after another. Five possible versions of him – and all the while, his voice is there and…

  His voice is not there.

  His voice has, in fact, stopped.

  Ah.

  I blink.

  He’s looking straight at me, both eyebrows (scarred and unscarred) raised expectantly.

  Is everyone’s bone structure as symmetrical as that? Because his cheekbones are really, really balanced.

  And pretty.

  Really pretty.

  “Hope?”

  “Yes I am right here, hello. Right here.”

  “Are you okay? Your face is all flushed. Do you need to sit down? I can get you some water?”

  I give him a look. Over in his usual corner again – safely out of Luke’s sight line – George waves at me, then holds up his iPad. He’s drawn a pink heart on the screen. Checking that I’m still watching, he holds up a finger and taps it on the screen. The heart flashes on and off, as do the red CRUSH letters he’s written underneath. I hate him.

  Luke has spotted me looking right past him and is halfway to turning around and seeing when I grab his shoulder and stab my pencil wildly at the diary sitting in front of me.

  “That was all good. Really good. I actually think you’ve got it, more or less. And, ummm…just to check…you know, the schedule? And you’re all good with that? All set? Because…yes. Of course you are. You know. Great. Great. Great. Yes. Okay then! Awesome!” I flourish the pencil at him a little too hard, and smile a little too widely…but at least George has put his stupid iPad away and nobody’s the wiser about any of it.

  Except…

  There, taking a long swig from his water bottle at the side of the stage and looking from me to George to Luke and seeing everything?

  Tommy.

  Oh, goody.

  The stage door.

  The Earl’s stage door.

  I stand on the pavement like an idiot, staring at it.

  A late idiot, staring at the stage door she should be walking through in a hurry…but I can’t. I feel like I have to remember this. Every last detail of it matters.

  The door is hooked open, waiting. The inside panel, swung outward and visible from the street, is painted red. A large white sign with thick red lettering reads:

  Underneath it, a smaller sign says: No public admittance. Authorized visitors only beyond this point.

  And today, that means me.

  Beyond the door, a small flight of painted concrete stairs leads up and turns sharp right – and I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked up them in my dreams, just like I did on my birthday all those years ago.

  Over it all, lighting the way, is the globe light, and it feels like it’s shining just for me.

  The rehearsal room was fine…but this is why I’m here.

  And I’m here.

  Throwing a quick glance over my shoulder in case anyone happens to be passing by, I step through the stage door and – wanting to make myself remember; wanting to imprint the feel of the treads under my shoes, the coldness of the handrail under my fingers – I walk up and round the turn in the stairs to sign in at the desk…

 
…And find myself face-to-face with a small ginger cat who is sitting on the sign-in book, blinking at me.

  “Umm…hello?”

  The cat studies me for a long moment, then starts washing behind one ear.

  Right.

  I try again.

  “Hello?”

  There’s a faint rustling sound, and a cupboard door slams somewhere nearby before a woman with huge curly black and silver-streaked hair appears from behind me, edging around the desk. The cat stops washing and makes a chirping sound as she comes near. It’s more than I got.

  Gently tipping the (reluctant) cat off the sign-in book, the doorkeeper looks me up and down. “Stage management intern. Yes. You’re on my list.”

  “Is that good?”

  “I should think so.” She scans down a printed sheet of paper. “Hope?”

  “Yes. That’s me. I’m Hope.”

  I can stop talking now.

  “I’m Roly,” she says, pushing the sign-in book and a pen towards me. “You sign in here.” She points to a column already full of names. Amy’s is – predictably – at the top, followed by Rick’s. On the other side of the page is the actors’ sign-in, and instinctively I find myself scanning it for Luke.

  “Go on through,” she says, waving the pen in the direction of the second door on the right and snatching the list away before I get the chance to look for any other names.

  Not that I can really think too much about anyone or anything else right now, because the door…

  Through the little glass pane in the door I can see the lights are all on…and I can hear Rick calling out to someone.

  Everything’s waiting, just on the other side.

  So I walk through.

  The door leads straight into the wings of the Earl’s stage. I can see it stretching out in front of me between the flat panels that shield the backstage area from the audience. I have no idea how anyone could ever want to step out there. What if you walked out into the spotlight and could remember the name of every teacher you’ve ever had, the birthday of everyone you’ve ever been friends with – but not one word of your lines, and it’s so obvious you’ve dried that everybody in the building could tell? What if you went left when you were meant to go right and crashed into one of the other actors, or your costume ripped, or your wig somehow got caught on a piece of the set? What if you broke a prop? What if you fell off the edge of the stage?

  “Hope? Is that you back there?”

  Rick’s voice carries across the auditorium, over the stage and into the wings. I’ve got so used to the idea of “Rick the director” that I’d almost forgotten about “Rick the actor”, trained to make himself heard across a theatre even when he whispers.

  I shuffle my bag onto my shoulder and stick my head out through the side of the flats.

  “I’m here! Sorry, I got—”

  “No, no. That’s fine.” He waves my apology away. “We’re still sorting some things out. Do you want to take some time to have a look around downstairs and backstage? We’ll need you to get a feel for the place, and it’s rather a maze back there. There’s a press event a few of the team need to attend – we’ll find you when we need you after that.”

  Do I want to? Obviously. It’s what I’ve wanted since I was a kid – to be allowed to poke around back here.

  “Oh. Okay. Sure. I’ll just…”

  I can barely see him, sitting somewhere in the middle of the stalls – even with the house lights fully up, the spots on the stage are blinding. And hot. I can already feel sweat starting to prickle against my scalp. How do actors do this every night? Why? Shielding my eyes with my hand, I finally pick him out – and Nina, and three or four others I don’t recognize. They’re huddled around a couple of laptops on a table set up across several seats in the stalls, and even though I’m on the stage, even though I’m in the actual spotlight, I’m forgotten.

  Invisible.

  I try to stop the smile, but I can’t.

  I’m here.

  The Earl’s Theatre, with its rows of plush red seats; its gold-painted cornices and gilded columns. Empty, the auditorium looks huge. It is huge. Does it look bigger or smaller from here when it’s full, I wonder? In just over a week, I’ll find out, I guess…

  The more I look, the more I see – not just the red and the gold and the gleaming, glittering magic of it all, but the things that make the magic work. There, at the back, there’s a sound tech desk. And there, in the box stage-left, are the bank of speakers and a follow-spot to track the actors as they move. The same on the other side of the stage. Beside the doors are the seats for the front-of-house staff: narrow flip-down perches upholstered in the same red velvet as all the others but with far less padding.

  And the thought drops into my mind easily, like it’s coming home: Which one of those is Luke’s? Where does he sit when he works here?

  I can picture him folded into one of the seats, watching the stage, or standing inside the door, checking tickets and smiling people to their places. I can picture him everywhere. Instinctively I look down at the bare boards under my feet. Where will he stand when he’s onstage? Here, where I am? A little to the left? I imagine his feet in the same spot as mine, the two of us overlapping like shadows cast by different spotlights.

  And there in the wings is the reason I’m here, sitting there unnoticed by everyone but me: the prompt desk, the desk I’ve wanted ever since I can remember. Tucked right up against the wall, it’s a tall, narrow thing on castors with an equally narrow little stool tucked beside it, bearing a pair of monitors, a row of switches and buttons on the front and a little light with a blue bulb. A sheet taped to the side is the script for the auditorium announcements. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen… There’s a headset sitting on the desk, and even from here I can see the gold of the Earl’s crest glinting on the side.

  I’m here.

  “Hope! You’re here – good. Hold this a minute, would you?”

  Amy hands me something as she marches past. I take it automatically.

  It’s a hammer.

  “Come on, with me!” She doesn’t even break her stride.

  I look at the hammer.

  It has no answers for me.

  So I follow her through a door, down another set of concrete steps to the lower level of the theatre and into a labyrinth of tight corridors that smell of glue and sawdust. It smells of things being made, things being built; magic being stapled and sawn into shape. It smells of backstage.

  “I need to speak to the guys down in the workshop – you might as well come and see it while I’m there.”

  Amy’s voice bounces off the walls as I trail after her. At least it’s well-lit down here – the lights don’t get turned off during a performance like they do in the wings so there’s no need to learn the exact whereabouts of every single piece of set, equipment or rope in case you trip over them in the twilight at the edges of the stage. It’s only the stage team who need to be part-bat, navigating by dim blue torches. And luck.

  The corridor turns almost completely back on itself and ends in two battered steel swing doors with loud banging coming from behind them.

  The workshop.

  There’s sawdust on the floor and a workbench covered in tools and tubs of varnish. A large pinboard papered with sketches and technical drawings takes up most of the wall above it, alongside a row of hooks. One of them holds a pair of heavy-duty work gloves, another has a hard hat. The hard hat has been covered with leopard-print fake-fur and has the word Musher painted on it in glitter.

  Leaning against the far wall is a row of framed paintings that could have come straight from a museum – but even from here, I can see that they’re still drying. Priceless antique pictures that were made the day-before-yesterday… Everything is deadly serious here – but it isn’t. Nothing and everything is play. It’s false and it’s fact and it’s real and it’s imagined and it’s perfect.

  Amy has launched into a long, involved discussion with a tall guy wearing
dodgy cut-off denims and a black vest (also covered in sawdust). He keeps waving a spirit level around for emphasis while Amy peers at a sketch pinned to the wall: a drawing of a huge wooden throne. It must be the Magister’s seat for the Piecekeepers’ headquarters set. It’s just as fantastical as I’d imagined it to be – especially as that’s meant to be a huge manor house in the middle of nowhere, full of paintings with magic trapped inside them. It looks ancient and solid and – to be honest – a bit haunted. When it’s all assembled onstage and lit, ready for the first time Jamie sees it… I can picture it already. It’ll look incredible.

  The varnish fumes make the air feel buzzy – warm and woody, a little like the inside of a violin must smell – and somewhere a radio is playing. There’s a rack of short scaffolding poles stuffed into a corner, and a crowd of coloured buckets full of clamps, clips and mysterious lumps of metal. And as far as everyone who sits in the auditorium upstairs knows, none of this even exists.

  Amy remembers she has a shadow and turns to me.

  “Duty calls, I’m afraid. Can I leave you to find your own way around and familiarize yourself with backstage? You’ll need the production office, wardrobe…George is up there somewhere, I think. The dressing rooms, green room… Oh, and can you let Roly know I’ve ordered some lunch for the company and crew? It’ll need to come through the back.”

  “Lunch. Dressing rooms. Wardrobe. Got it.”

  “Great. I’ll come and find you later.” She pulls a tape measure out of her pocket and turns her attention back to the drawing on the wall.

  “Right. Show me…”

  Ducking back out of the workshop, I retrace my steps to a junction in the corridor where, helpfully, there is a sign pointing to Wardrobe, Dressing Rooms, Toilets, Showers in one direction, and Prod Off, Stage, Green Room in the other.

  Production office or wardrobe.

  Which way?

  George.

  I turn right for wardrobe and follow the corridor along, stopping outside a white door with a blue plastic sign screwed to it.