Joan shoved an arm through her parka’s sleeve. “Everything okay, love?”
“Yeah, it’s Lucy. She emailed new scans of her drawings. Wants my feedback ASAP.”
“She’s such a bossy boots!” Joan laughed and zipped up her coat. “Why don’t you come with us to the National Football Museum? There’s a new Fergie exhibition!”
“Nah, I need to get Freddie a card. His birthday’s next Saturday. Then, I’ll head straight back and edit my play a dozen more times.”
Joan smiled. “If you change your mind, you know where to find us.”
“And watch you drool over that big United team painting again? It’s not an interactive exhibit, Joan. I think they’re serious with the Do Not Touch sign.”
Michael nodded. “Yeah, I really don’t want to get chucked out again, Mum.”
“Bloody Nora.” Joan threw her hands up. “You reach up and touch Beckham’s pecs the one time and you’re branded for life!”
The Sinclairs zigzagged through the tables and climbed the stairs, trading the restaurant’s homey warmth for a cloudy Manchester April afternoon. Alex shivered as the damp chill pierced her coat.
“There are some lovely card shops in the Arndale Centre.” Helen ushered her family down narrow Old Bank Street. “Rain’s held off. Why don’t we take the scenic route down to King Street and then up Spring Gardens? Isn’t that Italian restaurant there? The one owned by that United player? What’s it called?”
“Rosso.” Joan nodded enthusiastically and turned right onto Cross Street. “That randy old git in my class wants to take me there. I’d love to go, but not with him. It’ll turn into grab-a-granny night. He’s handsy.”
“The Arndale, it’s a bit out of the way. I was going to pop into the card shop in the arcade…” Alex pointed over her shoulder in the opposite direction. “…right there.”
“We’ll walk with you,” said Helen.
“Yeah, for all of one minute!” Alex joked.
“Embarrassed to be seen with us, love?” Joan nudged Alex with her elbow. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“We just want to spend more time with you, Alex, that’s all.” Michael smiled.
“Dad, I’m rarely out of your sight.” Alex hugged him. “I’m just gonna grab a card and get back. Yesterday’s session was a double, so I’m behind in my writing.”
“What type of card are you looking for?” Helen clutched her stepdaughter’s waist and steered her along Cross Street.
“For Freddie?” Joan laughed. “Has to be a cheeky one.”
“Has Simon told his parents yet?” Michael pulled his coat closed against the breeze.
“Freddie would be a lovely son-in-law,” said Joan.
Alex’s head pinged back and forth, dizzy with their non-stop interrogation. She swerved left to the arcade’s entrance. “Okay, twenty questions ends now.” She laughed. “Bugger off. Go enjoy the football museum. I’ll see you at home.”
“Okay, well…” Michael nodded. “Call if you change your mind.”
“I won’t. Go.” Alex backed up towards the arcade’s entrance.
Joan’s eyes roamed to the darkening sky. “Don’t dillydally. Looks like rain.”
“If you hurry love, you can catch the 2:25 train home.” Helen didn’t budge.
Alex’s eyebrows met in the middle. “Okay, weirdos. I’m going…even if you’re not.” She skipped under the stone arch and into the Royal Exchange Arcade.
Finding Freddie’s card proved more difficult than Alex thought. Ten minutes and three cards later, she stood underneath the arcade’s Cross Street entrance, watching the pummeling rain flood the road. What to do? Buy a cheap umbrella? Grab a taxi? All the cabs splashing through the dirty puddles were occupied. Alex looked at her phone: only two fifteen P.M. Hmm. The entrance to the Royal Exchange Theatre was next door, just a quick dash away. If she had to wait out the rain…
Pulling up the collar of her coat, she ducked her head and dodged the fat raindrops. She ran up the theatre’s stone steps and through its glass doors. Craning her neck, Alex’s eyes climbed the soaring columns that reached upwards to the ceiling of the Great Hall, a historic meeting space once used as the epicenter of Manchester’s booming 1920s cotton trade.
“Gorgeous,” Alex sighed aloud, happy to revisit the beauty of the hall’s massive glass domes dominating the ceiling. Even with the unrelenting downpour outside, natural light spilled through the glass, illuminating the floor.
Cafés and a gift shop hugged the perimeter of the cavernous space. The steel and glass theatre, suspended from the building’s four columns, commanded attention in the centre like a seven-sided spaceship. Alex weaved around theatre fans, their anticipation contagious as they rushed to their seats for the matinee’s start.
Why not? Since she was here… head down, texting furiously, she strode over to the box office line. She hit send.
Dad, change in plans. Seeing a play! Be back for tea.
The play would be…research. Yeah. Not only would she chill out for two hours or so, but she would also get a grasp of the stage size, how intimate the space was for the audience, all need-to-know details if she was to submit work there.
She dug for her wallet but got interrupted by a buzz in her hand.
Alex, your writing won’t get done sat in a theatre.
Oh, Dad. She shouldn’t have mentioned at lunch about falling behind in her writing. His motto was always work now, play later. She didn’t reply and stuffed the phone in her pocket as the woman ahead of her turned away from the ticket window.
Alex looked up.
Fuck?!
She did a double take, her heart stuttering beneath her coat. For the first time in six weeks, her lungs felt heavy, uncooperative. The pale Irish skin. The dark eyebrows. The jet-black hair, misbehaving and tumbling over his forehead. The parted lips that had softly touched hers so many times. The poster’s artwork was abstract, but the identity of the male was unmistakable: Mark. Her Mark was in Manchester on the poster for this play—Constellations—a play she had read and always wanted to see. The beautiful story was a romantic wallop to the gut about fate and what-ifs and clumsy communication; a tale about falling in love, cheating, and breaking up; the cruelty of forgetting and the desire to remember. Her jaw fell open as an unbearable ache pressed down on her chest, her family’s words replaying in her mind: We’ll walk with you…Don’t dillydally…Your writing won’t get done sat in a theatre…
They knew.
The poster was all she could see, the two people who had broken her heart, lost in each other’s eyes: Mark’s intense gaze, drinking in his co-star, his hands cradling her face. Fallon’s body offering the unspeakable: longing, want…love. Mark and Fallon. A couple. On stage. Here.
“Hello, can I help?” The chirpy voice of the woman behind the box office window snapped Alex back into the room. “You all right?”
No, Alex wanted to holler. She breathed deeply, her mind racing, desperate to hold on and not allow this shock to unravel the past six weeks’ hard work. She wouldn’t allow it.
“The performance starts in less than five minutes…”
Alex smiled tightly. “One…please.”
“There’s one seat stage level, back row?”
“I’ll take it.”
Mark’s hand touching Fallon’s lower back, pulling her closer…that sweet smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes…the urgency in his kiss…the nuances he had shared with Alex triggered memories: warm, loving, painful memories that would never be relived and would be forever altered.
Alex’s hands flitted from her collar to her abdomen to her face, unable to lie idle. Each time Mark touched Fallon, Alex’s stomach dropped, an endless rollercoaster ride—her worst nightmare—except here, she couldn’t scream. She had to take it. Watch it. Even looking away, their voices intermingled like their lips. Was this what it would have been like in Dublin? To watch them together after midnight struck and “Auld Lang Syne” had been sung? Di
d Mark like the way Fallon’s skin felt? How she tasted? How much of this was acting? How much was real? Alex couldn’t tell.
The theatre had always been her safe place, a port in the storm, but right now it was pushing her under, locked in an undertow that threatened to drown her once again. She squirmed in her chair, nausea swirling in her stomach. Her usual response—her old response—would be to cry and run. Her eyes darted down her row. G10, her seat, was one of three that made up the short back row. It was on the end beside the wall, and the only way out was to her left, past two people sitting beside her. She was blocked in, trapped. She checked her phone: forty of the play’s seventy minutes left to go. Damn.
Catching Alex’s lit phone screen, the woman on her immediate left shot her a dose of side-eye. Alex sat back in her seat. WTF? She knew better. Leaving during a performance was impolite, disruptive, and potentially…revealing. Mark might see her. Fallon might see her. Humiliating if she fled. Heartbreaking if she stayed. Why the hell had she bought that stupid ticket?
She closed her eyes and concentrated on one breath at a time. Inhale…exhale…inhale…
Mark and Fallon’s voices floated to the back of her mind. A new voice took over…her own.
These negative thoughts aren’t good for me. I know this anxious feeling will pass. It always passes. I will be fine.
She captured her roaming hands, squeezing them together in her lap.
Mark and I wanted different things. I believe I did the right thing to be happy, to be healthy. I’m confident I WILL be happy. I know I’m strong and able to have an even better life without Mark.
She continued her measured breathing and opened her eyes. Mark, in character as Roland, was kneeling down in front of Fallon—playing Marianne—with a tiny black box in his hand. Alex inhaled slowly…exhaled…inhaled…
It’s a PLAY. He’s reading his lines. She’s reading hers. He will kiss women on stage. It’s just his JOB…everything is okay. I’m okay.
Her throat was easing, along with her pounding heartbeat. Alex sat back in her seat and breathed in.
I’m determined to enjoy the play and have a good time.
She concentrated on the play, getting lost in the rhythm of its words. Tears collected in her eyes, not for the boyfriend she had lost, but for his mesmerizing performance. Mark wasn’t playing Roland—he was Roland.
The actors spoke their last words. The audience leapt to its feet, showering Mark and Fallon with applause.
I feel better. I’m fine. I really am.
In the back row, Alex stood up. No fleeing, no hiding, although her lack of height and the tall man in the row ahead of her did keep her attendance a secret.
Everything is going to be all right.
Alex applauded as much for herself as the actors on stage.
Thirty-Two
“As soon as Lucy heard about Constellations, she called Michael.” Helen leaned against the train’s window as it chugged away from Manchester Piccadilly towards the suburbs. “When was it again?”
“January 2nd,” Joan answered, popping the lid off her tea.
“Lucy and I were at Borough Market that day.” Alex fiddled with a discarded newspaper left on the table between them. “Her boss—”
Michael shook his head. “No, it was Freddie who left her that message. Lucy was still talking to him then. She called me from the market, but got my voicemail. We chatted when she got home.”
“She told me she had a work emergency.”
“Lucy’s a pretty good actress,” said Joan.
Alex narrowed her eyes. “So, Mark found out about doing Constellations that day?”
“No, he knew a few days before Christmas,” said Joan. “Just his part. The female lead hadn’t been cast then.”
“He knew before Christmas?” Alex frowned. “We were together. He never said anything.”
Joan shook her head. “Apparently, he was going to tell you on your anniversary. He reckoned you’d be thrilled: living with him during the play’s six-week run, close to us. You could write and be together every day. It would have been perfect…”
“Yeah.” Alex slumped back in her seat, her mind drifting to the star earrings Mark had bought as an anniversary gift—constellations…
Michael sighed. “When it became clear that Mark was flying back to Dublin without you, Freddie told Lucy about it. I guess he figured that maybe if you knew about the play, you might patch things up with Mark.” He shrugged. “But Lucy didn’t want to interfere. Nor did we, love, and when you decided to come up here, putting all your effort into managing your anxiety…we thought it best that you didn’t know. It would be easier for you to move on if you didn’t know he was in Manchester.”
“Didn’t I say, Michael? We should’ve told her.” Joan put her arm around her granddaughter’s shoulder.
Michael crossed his arms. “Now I’m wishing we had, too.”
Alex sighed. “It was a total shock, but…once I knew, I had to see him…”
“I’m glad we found you afterwards. I hated the thought of you stuck in that theatre with Mark and that hussy,” said Joan. “I had a lovely vanilla slice while we waited for the play to finish, and the café girl gave me it for nothing.”
“You hate vanilla,” said Alex.
“You can’t truly appreciate chocolate without a little vanilla, love.” Joan smiled.
“How you could eat, Joan…I was worried sick.” Helen looked at Alex. “You had been crying…”
Alex shook her head. “I didn’t cry over Mark. I cried because the play really touched me.”
“Or maybe a bit of both?” Joan squeezed Alex’s shoulder.
She stared at the sports headlines on the newspaper’s back page and flipped it over. A familiar face smiled from the top corner. “Is that Mark?” She grabbed it for a closer look.
“A play review?” Joan leaned in.
“I’m gonna read it.”
“Is that a good idea?” asked Michael.
“Dad, I just sat through seventy-minutes of Mark acting out a relationship with Fallon. I think I can handle a review. Despite…everything, it was a great play. I’d like to see what they thought.”
Alex flipped to the article: Lairds and Liars Star Talks Fans, Theatre, and Manchester. “It’s a Q&A.”
A slow breath left her lips. She began reading. Michael and Helen kept an eye on her, and Joan read over Alex’s arm.
Q: Two and a half years after graduating from drama school you landed Lairds and Liars. Did luck play a part in your success?
A: “Luck has everything to do with [my success],” Keegan says, sipping his water. “I’ve worked hard, but so have all the talented actors I went to drama school with. The struggle to get noticed, bouncing back from rejections, the times I wasn’t asked to audition—which still happens, by the way—is always on my mind. If it wasn’t for Lairds, I’m sure I’d still be bartending, running to auditions between shifts, and waiting for my phone to ring. I think ‘why me’ daily.”
Q: Were sacrifices made to get where you are now?
A: “Sometimes you have to make choices you never thought you’d make. Even with a little success, things don’t pan out the way you think. I’ve learned that achieving your dreams has a cost; it’s bittersweet. Sometimes you end up losing what’s…what’s very important to you.”
Alex pulled away.
“You okay, love?” Joan looked up from the page.
“Yeah. It’s just…”
“You don’t have to keep reading…”
How could she stop?
Q: How does it feel following in the footsteps of Benedict Cumberbatch and Kit Harington as the internet’s boyfriend?
A: “It’s flattering, but fans might be surprised. I’m actually a rubbish boyfriend, but I’m learning. I won’t repeat the same mistakes.”
Q: Your film and TV schedule has been non-stop. Why did you decide to tread the boards?
A: “The theatre community embraced me straight out of d
rama school when no one else would. I owe it so much; it just feels like home. But since Lairds, I’ve been offered mostly outdoorsy movie roles that require lots of physicality. I love the films I’ve shot so far, and I’m looking forward to the action-thriller I’ll be starting in August. We’ll be shooting in Mexico, Russia, Portugal—”
Q: Is that Full Throttle 3: Blood Lust, the Dwayne Johnson blockbuster franchise?
Alex’s jaw fell. “He’s in Full Throttle 3?”
“Ooh!” Joan squeezed Alex’s arm. “I love those movies!”
Alex looked at her grandmother and went back to reading.
A: “It is! I’ll be spending spring and summer in the gym, bulking up for it. But like I said, I’m thrilled to get back to my roots on stage, taking on Constellations. It’s very intimate.”
Q: Was that what attracted you to the play? The emotional range required?
A: “Yes. It’s a sexy, heartfelt story about boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and what might have been. I think anyone who has been in love will relate to Roland and Marianne, especially if you’ve questioned what you did or didn’t do in a relationship. That aspect especially resonated with me, and I’m sure it will touch audiences. I jumped at the chance to perform here again. Manchester and its people—they’ll always have a big place in my heart.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Alex’s mouth.
Q: You just completed filming A Promise Unspoken in Dublin with your Constellations co-star, Fallon Delaney. Your play’s director praised what you both bring to your roles. He said: “The reason Fallon was cast is because she has a sizzling chemistry with Mark. You can’t fake that, especially live on stage.” Mark, care to say a few words about her?
A: “Fallon and I have known each other since we were kids, so yeah, there is a shorthand that we bring to the stage. She’s a very talented actress.”
London, Can You Wait? Page 25