by Lucy Dawson
“Can you hold the door, please?” a shaky voice says, and it’s mine. He looks at me, running his eyes up and down before deciding I’m not worth bothering with, but he holds the door and I clatter across the street.
Once I’m in, the thick metal door jerks shut behind me and I’m in a long, wide corridor: harshly lit, with a floor like a hospital corridor. No plush velvet like the foyer and the inside of the theater. I see a noticeboard on one wall and another door at the far end. I start to walk toward it, my heels click-clacking, when a voice says, “Excuse me! Miss? You need to sign in. Who have you come to see?”
I turn and notice for the first time a small office. Peering through the glass, I’m looking into the face of an old bored man with sagging jowls like Deputy Dawg. He’s enormous, with a strip of pasty flesh just visible above his waistband where his shirt isn’t quite big enough to tuck into his trousers. I’m not sure how he squeezed into such a small space. Maybe he hasn’t been out of there for years and years. What I can see of the walls behind him is lined with hanging keys. There is a phone sitting on his desk, and he has a big notebook in front of him. “Name?” he wheezes, reaching for his pen.
This makes me panic a bit. “Lottie Myer,” I say finally. Sorry, Lottie.
“Who are you visiting? Marc’s in. Come to see him?”
“No,” I say truthfully. “I, er, work for a magazine that is interested in reviewing the show.”
He snorts dismissively. “You do know how long this show has been running, don’t you?”
I stand there mutely, and he sighs. “All right, then. Wait there and I’ll see if the company manager is in. She can tell you who you need to contact.” He reaches for the phone and I feel my heart speed up. Shit. Now what? What’s a company manager? That sounds important. What do I do?
The door bangs again, making me jump. I turn around, and a delivery bloke looks over the top of my head like I’m not even there and says something crossly to the old boy about moving the truck that’s just arrived and is blocking them in. He, in turn, hangs up the phone and a row ensues about what is whose responsibility, so I melt back and am wondering if I should wait or run when the door flings open again. A lanky man comes in with a cello or something on his back and I have to flatten myself against the noticeboard on the wall behind me to get out of the way. The old man is still arguing and there’s a lot of finger-pointing going on. No one notices that I’ve got my hair caught on a pin on the board and have to turn to unhook it.
As I untwist it, I pull out a pin and a load of cards cascade to the floor. It’s a very full noticeboard. Drinks for Sharon’s birthday on Thursday. Tony and Tim are doing a concert in Wimbledon, Sunday night at eight on the 19th. A note from the company manager saying that this show has been designed around the concept of long hair for the men. Any further examples of haircuts, as noticed recently on CERTAIN cast members, will be deemed a breach of contract and they will be disciplined. A flyer for A Night of a Thousand Voices! in Hammersmith. A card for an accountant who is an expert in tax for those who act. A card with “For Sale! Vocal Scores for Lion King, Grease, Full Monty, Billy Elliot, Anything Goes,” and then…then…a card that says, “Girl wanted! Flatmate. One big double room, sunny, tube close. £500 pcm plus bills. Tell your friends! Call Lizzie or Debs on…”
Oh my God. It’s her—it’s her. One of the two numbers listed is definitely hers! I quickly rip the card off and shove it in my pocket. The old bloke and the delivery man are still arguing. I hover for a minute, guiltily, and then manage to slip out without being noticed.
Back on the street, I pull the card out and look at it like I’m holding the secret to eternal youth in my hands. Reaching for my mobile, not taking my eyes off the numbers, I bar my number and dial the one that is not hers.
It clicks straight on to voicemail, and a tinkly voice says:
“It’s Debs here. Can’t take your call, but you know what to do! Ciao for now!”
Then it bleeps, so I hang up quickly. Ciao for now? Who are these people?
Half an hour later, over a coffee, I’m still trying. Finally it rings, but then goes to voicemail. “It’s Debs here. Can’t take your call…” I fucking know. For God’s sake…
I try again after another ten minutes, and this time a sleepy voice answers, which throws me completely.
“Oh hello,” I stammer. “Is this Debs?”
“Yeah,” says the voice boredly. “Who’s this?”
I don’t know what makes me say it, I hadn’t planned to or anything, but my mouth suddenly and very assuredly says, “I’m phoning about the flat.”
“Oh cool!” says the voice, brightening. “What’s your name? Did you see the card?”
“Er, kind of…I’m a friend of Marc’s?” I try cautiously. “Lottie?”
There’s a pause while Debs searches her no doubt vacuous mind. “Oh God! Marc Banners! Oh fabs! And Lottie—didn’t we meet you at Tyler’s?”
“Yes?” I venture uncertainly. If you think we did, then we did. This girl is a fruit.
“Oh, how cool is this? Well, it’s still up for grabs, Lotts.” Lotts? We’ve known each other for under a minute. “Want to come and look at it? Marie’s already moved out, so it could be yours ASAP.”
“How about I come today?” I say brightly. Again, my mouth is acting on its own. If I were an actress, it would have its own contract. Come on, give me the address.
She pauses again. “Er, yeah? I suppose. I’m in this afternoon, be here by four, though, won’t you, because I’m going in early tonight.”
I promise I’ll be there before four, then she gives me the address and I give her a false number to reach me on if there are any problems, and that, as they say, is that. It’s that easy. I know where the bitch lives.
THIRTEEN
An hour later I am sitting in another café right across the street from the cut-price crockery shop Lizzie and Debs live above. Just sitting in the window on a high stool against a long bar flush to the glass, watching and feeling sick with nerves and anxiety. I’m actually shaking slightly (although that might be the coffee overload).
That’s it. That’s the place where she lives and where my boyfriend has probably had sex with another woman. She might be in there right now. I’m going to go over there in a minute and confront her…but what am I going to say? What will she do?
I’ve ordered another coffee, but it just sits in front of me going cold. I can’t stop staring at her flat. It looks so…so ordinary. It doesn’t look the house of a glamorous woman, more like a scrubby student flat. It’s just a building, I know, but as I’m sitting looking at the place where she lives, its horrible realness overwhelms me and my face is suddenly wet with tears. How could he? How could he let this happen?
The café owner is eyeing me suspiciously, but wisely chooses not to get involved with the weird crying girl who has sat motionless staring at the crockery shop for about half an hour.
It’s just so ordinary, so cheap. What was I expecting? Something sexy, opulent? I don’t know.
What is worse is that I am actually going to go and knock on the door, and maybe she’s going to come out and maybe I’m going to hit her. Oh, this is so fucked up! I have an overwhelming desire suddenly to phone my mum. My nice, almost normal mum, sitting at home in our kitchen. I wish I was there now. I wish she was there. A tear creeps down my cheek as I start to frantically look in my bag for my phone; I don’t care that she’s on a boat on the other side of the world, I need to hear her voice, I want to tell her everything…but I can feel my phone buzzing already. Someone is calling me. When I find it, a number I don’t recognize is flashing on the screen. I don’t answer. It’s thrown me and I forget about ringing Mum. Who is it? Debs? Seconds later I get a text saying,
It’s me! Got new mobile and number. Save it to phone. P xx
Pete. Dutifully I do as I’m told. I stare at his name on the phone and try to steady myself before slipping it back into my bag. Get a grip. Get a grip…I push the
hair out of my face and wipe my eyes with the back of my hand before lifting my head.
What I see next, as I look through the window, makes my hand fly to my mouth and clamp over it, as a muffled gasp of shock slips through my fingers.
She—Liz—is standing just the other side of the glass, right outside the window, staring down at the screen of her phone and smiling. There in front of me, less than three feet away. She’s wearing a long pillar-box-red coat and a floppy wide-brimmed Biba-esque hat. Her long blonde hair curls out from under it. On anyone else it would probably look totally stupid—on her it looks both cutting edge and very little-girly at the same time. Most importantly, though, she has a bag IDENTICAL to my Mulberry one slung over her shoulder. Utterly inseparable. They are one and the same.
It is partly this, I think, that renders me incapable of standing and running out into the street and ripping her head off, and partly the sudden shock of seeing her there in front of me. I just sit transfixed and stare at her as I wonder how much of a coincidence it can possibly be that we have identical bags, and yet she lives above a crockery shop in a not so nice area…Could she, would she really spend over £700 on a bag?
No…but I know a man who would. Equally, I seem to remember that that first text referred to him buying her another something…same brown, I believe…Was my bag meant for her?
If it was—that means he must have bought a replacement yesterday and seen her yesterday morning too—all while he thought I was ill at home in bed? Fucking, fucking hell.
I’m amazed that the waves of hate don’t shatter the glass and send deadly daggers slicing into her, or at the very least that she doesn’t sense someone staring at her with such loathing. Too self-absorbed, I think savagely, as I watch her staring at her mobile screen. I am frozen to my seat with shock and hatred. Her face has lit up and she is now holding the phone to her ear, waiting…totally oblivious to me…and now speaking. She smiles, says something into the phone and starts to walk off jauntily up the street in the direction of the tube. The thought immediately occurs to me that Pete might have sent both of us the same text with his new number…so is that him she’s talking to now? I grab my phone and frantically dial him. Sure enough, it bleeps for a second and then goes to voicemail.
This fills me with a new, cold, clinical strength. I don’t go running after her, I don’t grab her in the street and shove her hard up against a wall, making her gasp with shock and pain as the back of her head smashes into the brickwork and her stupid fucking hat falls to the ground. I am suddenly icily calm and composed. Something enables me to stand up, stride out of the café, march across the street and ring the bell to the flat over and over. There’s a frenzied yipping of a dog, but I keep ringing and ringing until I hear a voice shout, “Hang on, I’m coming!” and the door swings open.
FOURTEEN
The first thing I notice is some revolting little rat thing leaping around my ankles and yapping. It’s wearing a collar with a sparkly medallion hanging off it that reads, Mummy’s Little Princess. Resisting the urge to kick it away, I try to focus on the girl standing in front of me.
“Hi!” She grins with little white teeth. “You must be Marc’s mate Lottie. I’m Debs.”
She is tiny, very pretty and wearing a T-shirt that says Future Diva on it. She looks at me expectantly and beams vacantly. “Want to come in?” She stands to one side and I see a flight of stairs stretching out in front of me.
“Please stop barking, Pixie,” she scolds the animal that apparently is a dog and is still springing around our ankles. “Sorry about her.” She smiles at me. “She’s my flatmate Lizzie’s ’ickle baby. Yes you are! Yes you are!” She coos at the rat, which, exhausted at the exertion of coming downstairs, has collapsed pathetically on to the floor, probably as a result of being genetically engineered to have short enough legs to live in a handbag.
The sound of Liz’s name being spoken out loud makes me dig my nails sharply into the palm of my hand, but I don’t say anything. I just want to get into that flat. I really don’t know what I intend to do once I’m there, but I am now determined to get into this space that he has been in—see it with my own eyes, invade her life like she has mine. We go up the tiny narrow staircase, which has a door at the top, leading into the flat. It opens into the sitting room, and right away I get a good idea of what kind of girls Debs and Lizzie are.
There are helium balloons in the corner and a couple of empty wine bottles by the brightly colored sofas, one of which is orange, the other neon pink—both, I think, Ikea. The carpet could do with a hoover and This Morning is on TV, with the sound down. There are big montage frames of pictures on the walls. Glancing at one quickly, I see some pictures that look like dressing-room shots: lots of heavy makeup and people pulling faces, all trying to be the center of attention. Lizzie is in some and not in others. There is one shot of her hugging a very beautiful man and trying to look sultry. Debs starts to bang on about phone bills and council rates, but I’m not really listening. He has been in here. He’s seen all of this.
The kitchen is tiny, but then looking at Debs I should think she last ate a full meal in 2001. There is a box of Special K on the side and a blender next to some tired, wizened fruit sitting lethargically in a fruit bowl.
“So you’re a smoker?” Debs says.
I shake my head automatically and she looks appalled. “Really? God, how d’you manage that? What show did you say you were in?”
“Er, I’m not. Actually.” I’m too overwhelmed to be quick enough to lie, and the words just stumble out uselessly.
“Oh bad luck,” she says, barely listening. “Not many new things at the mo, are there—just sodding revivals everywhere.” She rolls her eyes. “Still, something will come up, always does, doesn’t it? I’ve been in Zippity! for what feels like forever…I’m soooo bored with it now. Anyway. This would be your room.”
She walks ahead of me and I follow her uncertainly into the most girly room I have ever seen. Pixie trots in after us and gets into a little pink, sparkly bed that’s sitting underneath a selection of glittery leads. As it stares balefully at me with oversized gremlin eyes, I decide it really is the most vile, pointless excuse for a pet.
“This is actually Lizzie’s room at the moment,” Debs chatters away, “although she’s going to move into the bigger one that Marie’s just left. All a bit complicated—Marie had some rather light-fingered friends, if you know what I mean—but basically, she’s gone and this could be yours ASAP. Nice, isn’t it?”
The walls of the room are a deep clotted cream and honey, but there is a kind of chandelier thing, which has lots of pieces of brightly colored glass attached to twisted wire that catches the light shining in through the large window. Muslin curtains waft and the bedspread looks crisp and clean. It smells faintly of a heady, heavy perfume and there are lilies…actual real fresh flowers in a vase.
“It’s a beautiful room,” I manage to say truthfully, gripping the straps of my bag so fiercely my fingers are cramping up. This is her room. Oh my God. What am I doing?
Debs looks around her. “Yeah, Lizzie has good taste.”
I know. She’s fucking my boyfriend.
I move slowly around the room and open the wardrobe. Her clothes hang in front of me. I can see a long blonde hair on the sleeve of a red jumper. Hers. How disgusting. “Good storage space,” I find myself saying. A lot of her clothes are cheap, high fashion, disposable. She’s a lot about image. Good shoes, though. Doesn’t scrimp there. Shutting the door again, I turn, glance at the bed, see the bedside table and almost cry out loud.
There is a picture of Pete by her bed.
I am nearly sick on the floor. I swear I actually physically retch.
Luckily though, Debs, who is nattering away about storage under the stairs, has wandered out into the hall again and doesn’t hear me. I’m frozen to the spot with the shock. It is him, isn’t it? Yes, it is! He’s wearing the Paul Smith shirt I got him for his birthday! Oh God oh God oh God. Brea
the. Keep breathing.
“Lottie? Oh, you’re still in here.” Debs springs back into the room like a little lamb, all fresh and innocent. “So what do you think?” She smiles brightly.
I open my mouth but no sound comes out…Thankfully from somewhere in the sitting room the phone rings.
“Hang on,” says Debs and dashes out.
This gives me enough time to leg it round the bed and stare at the photo more carefully—definitely Pete. He’s smiling and holding his hand up as if he doesn’t want his picture taken. I scan the background of the picture but it’s impossible to tell where he was. Then I see a card resting behind the photo. It has a dancing girl on it. I open it.
Good luck, Lizzie, from your number one fan. All love always, Peter xxx
The words swim, or maybe it’s me wobbling uncertainly, but I don’t hang around. Before I even think about what I’m doing, I shove it in my bag. I grab a cheap-looking pair of earrings as well. Then my legs give way and I sit heavily on the bed.
Debs comes back in and looks a bit surprised to see me sitting down. “Sorry about that. So what do you think?”
“I…” Come on—get the words out.
“I have a boyfriend,” I say. “Would he be able to come round whenever?”
“Oh yeah!” Debs smiles. “We’re all seeing someone then, so it might get a bit crowded as we’re all mostly around in the day and working at night, but it’ll be a laugh. It’ll be fine.”
“Are your boyfriends in the theater too?”
“Hardly!” laughs Debs and gives me an odd look. “You know what boys in the biz are like. No, mine’s a chef and Lizzie’s is an architect.”
Make it stop, please God, please…
“Well, if you want it, it’s yours.” Debs shrugs. “You seem great to me. You’ll have to meet Lizzie too, though, but I’m sure you’ll get on; after all, you’ve lots in common. Marc for one. How did you meet him? Was it on Chicago?”