by Georgia Hill
“Would you like me to?” he offered.
Merry shook her head again. But she managed to pick up the folder and open it with only slightly trembling hands.
Daniel watched as Merry read its contents. Her cheeks flushed and then paled, her usual mile wide smile absent. Until that moment, he hadn’t realised how fond of it he had become.
“It’s what I thought,” Merry said, in a quiet voice. “I’m not sure how Bob’s found out. Even if Venetia knew, she would never have told him; her opinion of him is lower than mine.” Merry attempted a smile and it came out twisted. “My parents certainly would never have done so, and anyway, they don’t know the whole story.” She looked down. “I’ve got to be shut in a mummy’s sarcophagus. For as long as I can. The longer I’m in there, the more money I’ll raise. I suppose it’s almost funny when you say it like that.” Merry straightened her shoulders and looked Daniel in the eyes. She sucked in a deep breath.
“Okay,” Daniel said, mystified. It didn’t sound too awful; not when you compared it to swimming with sharks. But, he could see how difficult it was going to be for Merry. He didn’t understand why, but her distress was genuine. Strangely enough, he could also sense a glimmering determination under the nerves and his admiration for her grew.
“You don’t have to do it.”
“Oh come on, Daniel. For one, it’s in my contract as Harri pointed out and, for another, I’m not going to let that slimy little low life beat me. Bastard.” Her voice was pure vitriol. “Bastard, bastard, bastard!”
“Feel better?”
“A little.”
“Look, here comes the coffee. Drink some.”
“Bossy boots,” Merry grumbled but obeyed. “God, he’s scum. And if I don’t do it, how will that look? Meredith Denning; couldn’t even get in a stupid bloody sarcophagus for charity!”
“You won’t get any arguments from me about the pond life that is Bob Dandry. And look Merry, while I can see this is going to be hard for you,” Daniel began.
“Just slightly,” Merry raised an eyebrow in humour.
“I don’t understand why,” he finished. He drank his espresso in one gulp. He didn’t know about Merry, but he certainly needed the coffee hit. “Do you feel up to telling me?”
Merry looked deep into Daniel’s kind eyes. He was a nice man. What a shame he was still so hung up on Julia. They’d had such fun in rehearsals and she didn’t want that to change. She’d been enjoying this far too much to let this new development change things. She’d never told a soul about what had happened. Even her parents had only the haziest idea of the resulting phobia. She simply avoided any situation that was likely to cause her a problem. And if it did, she used humour, albeit of the blackest kind, to deflect from her distress.
Merry bit her lip. “I know I can trust you.” And she realised she could. She’d been left with an abiding suspicion and distrust of most people but this man, who she had known for less than four weeks, she somehow knew she would trust. With her life, if necessary. It was a strange and wonderful feeling for Merry, who kept people at a distance if she could help it.
“Of course you can trust me.” Daniel he took her hand. The urge to protect Merry overwhelmed him. Peculiar and unfamiliar, it was what he wanted to do. Protect her.
Merry let her hand rest in Daniel’s comforting one. “Okay then.” She grinned, it was a weak, watery one but it was definitely a grin. “But we may need about a gallon more coffee and a bucket load of that gorgeous food I spied back in the banqueting room! I’ve been bottling this up for years.”
While Daniel went to load up plates with their breakfast, Merry let her head rest on the plasticky leather armchair and marvel at what she was about to do. It was her big secret. If she told him this, he would know her better than anyone. If she had to explain why it had to be Daniel, she wouldn’t be able to. It simply felt right. He was the right man.
Daniel came back, laden with croissants, pancakes and more muffins and with the message that coffee was following. Merry gave him time to settle back down, watched as a girl brought a tray of coffee and set it down and then took a deep breath and launched in.
“I’d only been at boarding school for a week before some of the others began to pick on me,” she began. “It started as a bit of plait pulling and knocking over my lunch tray. Nothing serious.” She shrugged. “But then it moved onto something more. They had a ring-leader, this group of bullies.” Merry took a deep breath. “Her name was Carly. Carly Jones. I’ve no idea what the motive was. Jealousy maybe? I’d made friends with one of her besties.” Merry pulled a puzzled face. “Anyway, Carly came up with this initiation ceremony. It was claimed, so Carly said, that anyone new joining the school had to go through it.” I know, Merry said, at the incredulous look on Daniel’s face. “But I was eight and new and lonely. I probably would’ve done anything simply to get accepted into the gang.” She took a gulp of coffee and continued. “They didn’t tell me any details but, it was promised, I’d know what I had to do when the time came. Well, three weeks later – “
“Three weeks? You had to wait three weeks?”
“Yup and I was terrified the whole time. Didn’t know what to expect, I suppose.”
“Oh Merry!”
“It’s alright, Dan. It’s a long time ago.” Merry patted his hand. “It must have been just before the first half term holiday, when it happened. I was woken up in the middle of the night. Even then I was tall for my age,” Merry gave a weak giggle, “and hefty, so it took a fair few of them to tie me up and gag me.”
“What?”
Merry smiled at him. “I know, it sounds really awful now. But at the time, I didn’t struggle all that much, just went along with it. It was the promised initiation, you see? Anyway,” she continued in a rush, as if now she’d begun, she wanted to get it over with. “I was carried quite some distance, I remember the girls huffing and puffing with all the effort.”
“Serves them right.”
Merry snorted. “Agreed. They shoved me in somewhere or other. I could hardly move, it was so small. I remember it smelling dusty. I heard the lock turn and I was left there. Alone.”
Daniel rubbed a hand across his brow. “And there’s me thinking girls are the gentler sex.”
“Yeah right,” Merry said, without humour.
“And then what happened?”
“I got my hands free, after a struggle, and then I could at least get the horrible, stifling gag off. It was a relief to be able to breathe more easily. I kept coughing to get the bits of fluff out of my throat. It was so dry. Then I tried to work out where I was. In some sort of cupboard,” she added before Daniel asked. “It wasn’t quite high enough for me to stand up. I tried and bumped my head on the shelf above. And it didn’t matter how hard I banged on the door, it wouldn’t budge.”
Merry fell silent, thinking back. She’d hoped the cleaners would come along soon and release her. It was pitch black and she’d begun to get frightened. No matter how loudly she yelled, it seemed she was out of the hearing of anyone in the entire school.
“Eventually,” she said, staring unseeing at the hotel bookcases, with their fake books, “I fell into a sort of fitful doze and when I woke up, I could see a glimmer of light creeping under the gap of the cupboard door. I was relieved. I thought someone would come and get me now. The cleaners maybe, or Carly? Then we’d all have a giggle about it and go into breakfast.”
“But they didn’t?” Daniel prompted.
“What? Oh no. Not for hours. Or that’s what it seemed like. I was getting really panicky.”
Merry recalled banging on the door and shouting again, only to end up bruising her knuckles and exhausting herself. She’d begun to get very frightened. And with the fear came cramp in her legs and the illogical certainty that the air in the small space was running out. She desperately needed the loo and the pain in her bladder added to the horror of it all.
She’d fallen into a daze, trying to take her mind away from the h
orror she felt. She concentrated fiercely on conjuring up an image of home: her cosy bedroom, her mother’s delicious tarte Tatin, Jasper the Lab waiting with a waggy tail to see her at half term. She had been forced to let her bladder go. It had been was the most mortifying thing about the whole experience. She hadn’t wet herself since a toddler.
“Then, miracle of miracles, I heard a key turning in the rusty lock. It was one of the cleaners. She wanted to put some dusters away, I think.” Merry frowned, thinking how absurd it was that she could recall such a tiny detail. “Anyway, I fell out on top of her, much to her shock. Think the poor woman retired not long after. Had enough of the girls’ high-jinks, I would imagine.”
Daniel drank another, now cold, slug of coffee. “I would imagine,” he echoed drily. “Then what happened?”
“After being squished up for so long, I couldn’t walk, so Matron was called and I was put in the San. The school’s medical room,” she added, seeing Daniel’s questioning look.
Merry fell silent again. After being cleaned up, a yet more humiliating experience by a Matron who clearly thought Merry should be old enough to control her bodily functions and said so in no uncertain terms, she’d spent two days recovering in bed.
Merry didn’t breathe a word about what had happened. Some kind of survival instinct told her that telling the truth about the bullying would be suicidal. In fact, she remained mute for the entire forty-eight hours afterwards. An unsympathetic Matron gave no encouragement so Merry took it all within herself, where it festered and magnified.
Looking back, Merry supposed she had been in shock, or possibly had some kind of mild post-traumatic syndrome. She was offered no help of any kind though, and after catching up on her sleep and having a cursory medical examination by the doctor, she was returned to lessons and the dormitory.
Daniel, looking at her face, knew she wasn’t telling him everything. She was miles away from him. Then he watched as she tried to pull herself together. She shook herself, drank more coffee and ate a morsel of cold, flaccid pancake. She looked up to see him staring, concerned.
Merry smiled and shrugged. She continued her story. “One consolation, I suppose, was a grudging acceptance from Carly and her gang. We never became friends though. We circled warily round one another in a sort of mutually agreed but unspoken distance. It was still fairly horrible at school until Carly was found guilty of one bullying act too many and she was expelled.”
“But you never told?”
Merry shook her head. “Would have made things worse for me. Or maybe it would’ve got rid of Carly sooner? Who knows, maybe it was a kind of misguided pride? Still, hindsight is a wonderful thing and I was only eight, remember. It was only when she’d gone that I could relax a bit.”
The truth was she’d never really relaxed since. The experience had left her with an abiding and deep-seated fear of being trapped in small spaces. And, being five feet ten by the age of twelve, it wasn’t difficult to keep finding herself stuck. Then later, when older, lifts, basements, tunnels - anywhere with no obvious exit was added to the list of places to have to deal with. Merry hated large crowds too, when she felt penned in and was jostled and she even found queues hard to deal with. She never gave up, though. She’d used her humour and fierce intelligence to hide the truth. By the time she left the school for Oxford, she was one of the most popular and well liked of pupils. She often wondered what had become of Carly.
When she finished, Daniel sat back on his chair. Some fresh coffee arrived, so he poured them both another cup. “And you’ve really never told anyone about this, at school or afterwards? And you’ve never had therapy or counselling?”
Merry smiled and shook her head. Trust Daniel, with his showbiz background, to think of that. In her matter-of-fact, middle-class upbringing, the most sympathetic phrase, whenever things went wrong, had been: ‘Worse things happen at sea.’ Therapy, or any kind of counselling, didn’t exist in her parents’ world. Perhaps she should’ve considered some? It had been a huge relief to share the experience with someone after all these years. Well, most of it. She’d missed out the more humiliating aspects. A thought occurred. “You mustn’t tell anyone, Dan. Please.”
“Of course not, if that’s what you want. Some of it is bound to come out when – if – you do the challenge, though. That’s part of it. So, don’t you think you ought to tell someone in the production company about it? I mean, I know everyone’s going to have to face some kind of fear but this is a real phobia, from what you’ve told me.”
“No!” Merry was adamant, her eyes blazing. “I’m not letting anyone else know how much it affects me. I’m not giving Bob the Bastard that satisfaction. I’m going to do this, if only to see that self-satisfied smirk wiped off his face.”
Daniel pursed his lips. “Well, okay, and you know you can count on my support.” He chased a croissant flake around his plate, a frown spoiling his smooth good looks. “One thing puzzles me, though.”
“What?”
“If you’ve never told anyone about this, how come Bob has found out?”
Merry shook her head, thoughtfully. “I’ve absolutely no idea but I’d be very interested to find out.” She stood up, with a sudden new energy. “And now Mr Cunningham, I’ve had enough of all this introspective rubbish. The clock is ticking and I have a tango to perform this week. Hadn’t we better get down to some practice?”
Daniel grinned up at her, enjoying her sudden change of mood. Besides, the full length Meredith was an impressive sight. “You’re such a taskmaster,” he complained.
“You bet, and you ain’t seen nothing yet.” Merry gave him the benefit of her mega-watt smile. “Come on lazy bones. As Jan would say, ‘Ve haff vork to do’!”
Step Seven.
Their tango, the following Saturday, was met with a much higher score than their abysmal waltz. Unusually, the judges were unanimous in their praise of Merry’s ability. Daniel was pleased too. He’d known she had the capability to pick things up quickly but what he really admired was her hard work and her persistence through even the most painful of blisters. Being so tall, she’d told him once, she’d never needed to wear heels, let alone dance in them. She seemed too, to have shaken off the momentary melancholy that had accompanied sharing her phobia. Meredith Denning was back on form – and how!
In the television studio bar after their triumphant tango, Merry glugged back her first drink with all the thirst of one stranded in a desert. The image of John Mills sinking his pint in Venetia’s favourite film, Ice Cold in Alex came to her. “Oh boy, I needed that.”
Daniel smiled indulgently and motioned to the barman for another round.
The others crowded round briefly to congratulate them but soon drifted off. Daniel liked it when it was just the two of them. Merry was so gregarious, she always had a flock of people around her. It wasn’t often, out of rehearsal time, that he had her to himself.
“You were so good tonight. I was really proud of you,” he said, as he passed her a fresh glass of wine. “Well done!”
“All down to you, Batman,” Merry replied, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “I’d never have the self-discipline to do this on my own.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Merry, I’ve a feeling you could do anything you want, if you really put your mind to it. You know, you’re really beginning to move like a dancer.”
Merry giggled. “Must be all those tap and ballet lessons at that excuse for a boarding school. If we’d done something really awful, they made us do country dancing in the summer, complete with a Maypole.” She snorted. “I always had to lead being so tall. Maybe I would’ve taken ballet more seriously but I could see the teachers never thought I’d have a future in it, once I’d gone past five eight and ten stone. I’ve forgotten most of it.”
Daniel shook his head. “Nah, you never forget all of it. You make some fantastic lines with your hands and feet and your posture’s brilliant now. And, I for one, am very pleased that you didn’t join the world of ballet. It would
have been my loss.”
They clinked glasses.
“To us,” Daniel cried.
“We are bloody marvellous, aren’t we?” beamed Merry.
“How lovely it is to see you all getting on so well,” came a snide voice. It was Bob standing behind them. “Don’t have too much to drink now, boys and girls, tomorrow is the first day of the challenges, remember.” He wagged an admonitory finger at them.
“And don’t forget,” said Merry, echoing his singsong tone. “It’s only Angie being filmed.” She raised her glass and drank deliberately deep. “You look cheerful tonight, Bob. Has someone died?”
Bob glanced from her to Daniel, aware he was being made fun of. “Well, no need to take that attitude,” he huffed. “Only doing my duty and reminding you not to drink too much. We’ve got a hard week next week. Two dances to learn, after all.”
“We’re hardly likely to forget that,” Merry replied and pointedly turned her back on him. “Where were we Dan? Oh yes, a toast. A toast to our partnership. Raise your glass.”
Daniel did as he was told and Bob slunk away.
“Not sure it’s all that wise to goad Bob like that.”
Merry drained her glass. “Probably not. But, what else can he do to me, Dan? He’s already got me stuck in a ruddy mummy’s case. He’s a—”
Daniel thought it wisest to humour her. “I know; he’s a bastard.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Merry peered into her empty glass. Well, I would if I had anything to drink.” And, with that, she summoned the barman and ordered another round.
Step Eight.
Merry was running late, but something stopped her from pushing open the door to the now familiar rehearsal room in the Maida Vale dance studio. She could see movement through the glass panel and paused. She could also just about hear the strains of some unfamiliar music.