Secrets, Schemes & Sewing Machines

by Katy Cannon

  While they took a short break and got changed, I hung the next set of costumes out ready for quick changes backstage after the interval, one eye on Connor, shifting the scenery ready for the second half.

  “Where’s my dress for the last scene?” Violet asked, suddenly appearing in the middle of the stage, calling back to me.

  Rolling my eyes, I hung the other costumes I was carrying on the quick-change rail and carried Violet’s mended dress on to the stage. Connor looked up and smiled at me.

  “It’s right here,” I said, holding it up for inspection. “Good as new.”

  Violet’s gaze scanned over the dress, obviously looking for flaws. Eventually she said, “What’s that flower on the front? That wasn’t there before.”

  “It’s going to look great on stage,” Connor said, coming round to look at it.

  “It’s a flower corsage. I made it from complementary fabrics so it shouldn’t look too out of place, and I’ve added corsages to the other three dresses, too, so they still match.” I could tell from her expression that Violet was desperate to be able to call me on not being able to fix that last hole, and having to resort to hiding it instead. But if she did that, she’d have to explain how it got ripped. In front of Connor, and anyone else who was listening.

  A flash of curtain on the other side of the stage, and I saw Ash off in the wings, checking through his props. My eyes widened. This was my chance. If I could get Violet to confess while Ash listened, everything would be fixed. Yasmin would be happy again. But Connor would know exactly what I’d done.

  I took a deep breath. I couldn’t wait until after the show. I had to chance it now.

  “The other rips we mended cleanly,” I said, my heart racing as Violet’s face turned stony. “The one on the left needed reinforcing, so you might want to be a little careful with it. The hole in the front should be completely covered by the flower, though.”

  Violet had frozen, staring at me. Connor just looked puzzled until, as predicted, he asked, “What happened to the dress? It was fine on Friday.”

  I raised my eyebrows just a fraction and waited for Violet to answer him.

  “Uh, Grace asked me to try it on again after the tech rehearsal,” she said at last, her cheeks turning pink. “It must have got damaged.”

  “Yes… And how was that again?” I asked.

  Connor’s gaze flew to my face, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Violet for a second.

  “I can’t imagine,” Violet said after a moment, her smile nasty. “What did you do to it?”

  Suddenly, the answer came to me, and I smiled apologetically as I spoke. “Actually, I’m really sorry. That tear on the front happened when I tried to get it down from the window jamb in the drama room. After you ripped it off, destroyed two of the seams, and threw it across the room.”

  Her face turned white, then bright red.

  “What?” Connor yelped. “Why would you do that?” he asked Violet.

  “Why? Because she was making all sorts of horrible accusations about me.”

  “All I said was that Jasper saw you that night at the bakery,” I said, as mildly as possible. “So we knew that it must be you who lied to Ash about what you’d seen.”

  “And I told you that no one would believe you if you told them,” Violet spat back. “Everyone knows you’re just after my part.”

  “You did say that,” I said, watching as the curtain at the side of the stage parted, and Ash came to stand behind Violet. “But one funny thing I noticed, you never denied making up the story.”

  “I didn’t… I must have done.”

  I shook my head. “Not once. You just tore off your dress and told me no one would believe me.”

  “Violet?” Ash stepped on to the stage. “What really happened that night? Tell me again what you saw.”

  She spun round, pale and anxious as she started to stutter out her lies again. “I… I was at the White Hill Bakery, and I saw them together.”

  “Actually at the bakery? Or outside?”

  “Outside. But I saw them through the window. They were sitting together…”

  “And?” Ash asked impatiently. “What happened next?” A long, awkward pause. “Grace was right all along, wasn’t she? You made up the whole thing.”

  Violet looked to me, then, and I think she knew the lies weren’t going to stand up much longer. “It was dark,” she said quietly. “I… It was hard to see … she had her back to me…”

  Ash stared at her, his face almost grey under the stage lights. “You lied to me. You didn’t see anything more than two friends talking, did you?”

  “I just…” Violet’s eyes were wide and scared now. “You’re my friend. And … and I knew she and Jasper were close. I didn’t want her to make a fool of you.”

  “She didn’t need to,” Ash said, his voice hard. “You did that all by yourself.” He looked at me. “I need to talk to Yasmin.”

  And I needed to talk to Connor. He was staring at me, those pale blue eyes expressionless. I needed to know what he was thinking.

  “She’s in the food tech classroom,” I told Ash.

  “There’s no time now.” Connor pointed down into the hall, where Mr Hughes had just walked in.

  “Right!” he called, and the cast started gathering from around the hall. “Second half. Let’s go!”

  “You have to go for the theatrics, don’t you?” Connor bit out, shaking his head as we moved backstage. “You can’t help yourself.”

  “Look, I know you didn’t want me to cause any drama. But you have to admit, I was right.” I’d fixed things. Ash would talk to Yasmin, and everything would go back to normal again.

  “You’d still have been right after the show.” Connor pushed past, still frowning, and I stared after him. This didn’t feel fixed.

  But I didn’t have time to worry about it just then. Connor would get over his sulk, we’d all get through the rest of the dress rehearsal, then it was showtime. The first-night high was bound to cheer him up. Everything would be fine. Right?

  Back in the drama room, things were in chaos again, with most people only half in costume despite having the whole interval to get changed. Izzy was already there, thank goodness, and between us we got everyone sorted and sent them back out to the stage.

  “What next?” Izzy asked, as the last one exited. She’d waited in the room for most of the first half, but the second half had more quick changes, so I’d need her backstage.

  “Now we go and wait in the wings, ready to help with the last costume changes.” I grabbed my script. “And I get to prompt them whenever they forget their lines.”

  “The first performance is in about four hours,” Izzy pointed out. “Shouldn’t they know them by now?”

  “Yes. But it’s the dress rehearsal. And you know what they say?”

  “No.”

  “Bad dress, great show.” I yanked open the door and headed out into the wings.

  “So … we want them to screw this up?” Izzy asked, following.

  “No. But at least we have something to say that will make them feel better if they do.” I flashed her a smile; Connor’s grumpiness couldn’t ruin my good mood. I’d let Ash and Yasmin make up, then everyone would know what Violet had done. Tonight would be a success and everything would be fine. “Besides, I wouldn’t worry. They did great in the first half. And I have a feeling that the second half will be even better!”

  But half an hour and countless prompts later, I had to admit I might have been wrong about that last bit. Izzy leaned in and whispered next to my ear, “I’m not sure some theatre superstition is going to help today.”

  I nodded. This wasn’t just a bad dress rehearsal. This was the apocalypse of dress rehearsals.

  Violet had barely managed a correct line since the break, and Ash seemed totally distracted, staring out into the hall as if willing Yasmin to suddenly appear and jump into his arms.

  And Connor … Connor just kept glancing over at me from the other side
of the stage, and his looks made me want to curl up on myself. He thought this was my fault. And I was suddenly very afraid that he might be right.

  Mr Hughes’s expression grew grimmer as the afternoon wore on, until the curtain call, when it emerged that our future stars of the stage couldn’t actually manage to all bow at the same time.

  “OK, that’s it.” Mr Hughes sighed, obviously baffled as to what had changed between the first and second halves of the rehearsal. But I knew. “Look, you all know the saying. Bad dress, great show. So, no notes before tonight’s performance. Just … go out there and give it all you’ve got.”

  The cast stayed loitering on the stage as he walked out, as if they weren’t really sure what to do next. There wasn’t enough time to go home, and Mr Hughes had asked us all to bring dinner with us. A few might pop out to the newsagent or the fish and chip shop, but otherwise, we had two hours before the call to obsess over everything that had gone wrong that afternoon.

  That wasn’t going to help anybody.

  Looking up, I spotted Connor making his way towards me, and knew I had to act fast. If this disaster of a dress rehearsal was my fault, then it was up to me to fix it before the show, right? I didn’t have time for Connor to yell at me.

  “Can you get them out of their costumes?” I asked Izzy, and she nodded.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To find something to cheer this miserable lot up,” I told her.

  “Grace! Wait.” I slowed to a halt halfway across the yard to let Connor catch up.

  “No time,” I told him, starting to walk again as he got close. “I’m on a cheer-up mission.”

  “I need to talk to you.” He drew level, and I could feel his warmth next to me in the cool evening air. I wanted to make everything right. But first, we had to get through this damn play.

  “I haven’t got time for you to say I told you so right now,” I said, and picked up my pace.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, matching my stride easily.

  “The food tech classroom.”

  “Why?”

  I flashed him a look. “Because everyone on that stage is miserable right now, and I know you think that’s my fault.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “You didn’t need to.”

  He sighed. “I just don’t understand why you had to confront Violet then.”

  “Because she wouldn’t have confessed at any other time. Sometimes, you need a little drama to make things work.”

  “And you think that worked?” Connor asked.

  An uncomfortable feeling wriggled through me. “Maybe not entirely as planned,” I admitted.

  “You should have talked to me. I thought we were OK, that we’d agreed what to do. I thought that we could talk about things at least.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am. Is that enough? And I told you, I’m fixing it. I’ve never found a better way to cheer people up than with cake.”

  Yasmin looked up as we walked in. “You two, too, huh?”

  “Two, too, what?” I asked. “Look, I need help. You guys up for it?”

  “You just missed Ash,” Jasper explained, from by the ovens. “Yasmin sent him packing.” Of course she did. I fixed everything and she sent him away. Still, I could only handle one problem at a time, so Yasmin and Ash were just going to have to sort themselves out for now.

  “What do you need help with?” Lottie asked.

  “You might want to talk to him, you know,” I told Yasmin. “We need cake, lots of it.”

  Mac, leaning against one of the counters, turned to Connor, “You able to keep up with their conversations yet?”

  Connor shook his head. “I have no idea what’s happening today.”

  “Give it time.” Mac clapped him on the back. “You’ll get it. What sort of cake and how much?”

  “Whatever you can give me,” I replied, ignoring his jibes.

  Jasper winced. “Dress rehearsal went badly, huh?”

  “Worse,” Connor said, with a pointed look at me.

  “Well, we’ve got a lemon drizzle, a batch of Red Velvet cupcakes and a tray of rocky road ready to go now. Will those do you?” Lottie started packing them up in a bag for me.

  “That would be great,” I said. “Will it leave you enough for tonight?”

  “We can make more.” Lottie passed the bag to me. “What else do you need?”

  “Um…” I hadn’t really thought beyond the cake. But now that she mentioned it… “Could someone grab the bunting we used for the Valentine’s Day Extravaganza?”

  “Do you want the leftover paper plates and napkins, too?” Yasmin asked, heading for the storage cupboard.

  “That would be great. And I could really use someone to help me serve up…” I gave Lottie a meaningful look while Yasmin wasn’t looking. Her eyes widened, then she caught on.

  “Well, Mac and I need to be here to keep baking,” she said.

  “And I need to find Izzy,” Jasper added. “You know, for the thing.”

  “The grand gesture,” Lottie said. “Of course.”

  Yasmin came back with her arms full of bunting and party plates. “Looks like you’re with me,” I told her.

  She frowned. “Can’t Lottie go? I really don’t—”

  “Trust me,” I said, handing the bag full of cake to Connor, and taking the bunting from Yasmin. “It will be worth your while. I promise.”

  It didn’t take long to set up the Cheer-Up Cake Stall, as Jasper had taken to calling it. Hiding his grand gesture under the table when Izzy wasn’t looking, he helped Connor hang the bunting, while Yasmin and I laid out the cakes. The stage was pretty much empty, with everyone off moping in corners around the hall or in the drama room. Behind the closed curtains, no one even knew we were there.

  Well, almost no one.

  “Yasmin?” Ash sounded uncertain, and with good reason. For a moment I thought she wasn’t even going to look up from the lemon drizzle cake slices she was laying out to acknowledge him. Then, with the last slice down, she sighed.

  “What, Ash?”

  “I wanted… I hoped that… Can we talk?” I almost felt sorry for him, standing there, his hands twisting around each other.

  I’d half expected Yasmin to jump back into his arms, like he’d obviously thought she would. But then I remembered how he’d believed Violet over Yasmin and decided he deserved to suffer, at least a bit. The important thing was that he knew the truth. It was up to Yasmin what that meant for the two of them.

  She sighed again, with more meaning this time. She was letting him know that if she said yes, it was just for him. She was fine without ever talking to him again, thanks.

  “Can you manage here on your own?” she asked me.

  “I think we’ll cope,” I told her.

  “Fine.” She looked at Ash at last. “You’ve got ten minutes.”

  As they headed off to the side of the stage, a clear metre between them, I straightened the last plate of cake, stepped back and admired my handiwork. The cake stall looked cheery, encouraging and – most importantly – delicious. Jasper had even drawn a brightly coloured sign with “Cheer-Up Cake Stall” on it to stick to the front. “Right. Time to open the curtains,” I told Connor, and he moved to the side of the stage. “And where did Jasper go?”

  “Not sure.” He yanked on the ropes and suddenly the curtains fell aside, and the hall opened up before me.

  I looked down at the cast and crew, who’d all turned to stare up at the stage – and me – when they heard the curtains open. Reflex, I assumed. You always watched the stage.

  “OK,” I called down, feeling self-conscious in front of a crowd for possibly the first time ever. Acting, I could do. I was less confident in my abilities as a motivational speaker. But Mr Hughes had been dragged off to some emergency staff meeting after school, and there wasn’t anyone else to get these guys in the right frame of mind to put on the best show they were capable of. This was my responsibility now. And not
just because Connor was blaming me – but because I might be the only person who could fix it.

  Taking a deep breath, I walked to the edge of the stage and sat down, putting myself closer to their level so I didn’t have to shout so much.

  “Look, I know this afternoon’s rehearsal was … wasn’t great. But I also know you’re going to rock it tonight. I know you can, because I’ve seen you all do it in other rehearsals. You just need to have a little faith in yourselves.”

  I stood up and stepped aside to point to the Cheer-Up Cake Stall. “This was the best way I could think of to perk you all up a bit. So, eat cake, cheer up, then go out there and do a great performance tonight. OK?”

  We weren’t taking money for the cake, so I didn’t need to man the stall. I just moved to the edge of the stage to let them all come up the stairs at the side, as they ran for the cake.

  All except two of them. In the middle of the aisle between the chairs we’d set out for the audience stood Jasper and Izzy. He gripped the stems of the flowers in his hands tightly enough that his knuckles were bone white, but he seemed lost for words now he finally had Izzy in front of him again, waiting to hear them.

  “Go on, Jasper,” I whispered, too quiet to be heard. “We practised this.”

  “Izzy, I…” He swallowed so hard I could see it. “I was an idiot. I should have known, from the first time you showed me how to do a blanket stitch – or even the seventh time, when you did it with exactly the same patience. I should have known that you were the only one for me.”

  Izzy’s smile was even brighter than the homemade dress she was wearing.

  “You’re weird – in a good way – and different and funny and clever and brilliant and an incredible seamstress. And you’re the only one I want to be with.”

  “You’re the only one I want to be with, too,” Izzy said, her voice soft.

  Jasper’s smile rivalled even Izzy’s. After a moment or two of just staring at each other, he seemed to remember about the flowers we’d spent two days making and thrust them forward at her.