The Last Act

by Laura Ellen Kennedy

  The

  Last Act

  After studying Fine Art for a while, Laura Ellen Kennedy went to university in London (reading Philosophy and the History of Art at UCL). Working in a bookshop until she got her first job in journalism, she then wrote for women’s and teen magazines for several years. She now works for a children’s charity in London and lives in Hertfordshire with her husband.

  The

  Last Act

  LAURA ELLEN KENNEDY

  PICCADILLY PRESS • LONDON

  For my parents,

  for their unwavering love and support.

  First published in Great Britain in 2009

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Laura Ellen Kennedy, 2009

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Laura Ellen Kennedy to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 85340 013 6 (paperback)

  eISBN: 978 1 84812 221 5

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD Cover design by Patrick Knowles Cover photo: © Roy Bishop/Trevillion

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 1

  I was still out of breath when I jumped on to the train, just in time. My hair was still damp and I noticed, once I was in the carriage and breathing normally, that my jumper was inside out.

  As I sidled though the carriage in search of somewhere to sit, I also couldn’t help noticing that Jade and Jenni (Year Twelve’s very own Devil Duo) had bagged their usual seats together, no doubt by elbowing past anyone so unlucky as to be standing in the way. They were staring at me with their upper lips curled up to their nostrils.

  ‘Oh my God, she’s such a disgusting mess. Hasn’t she ever heard of a hairdryer?’ Jenni ‘whispered’ so I could hear.

  As I walked past, I made as if I was picking my nose, just to let her know I really couldn’t care less if she thought I was disgusting. As if I’d want my hair to look like hers, anyway. She clearly got up early every morning to torture it with electrical appliances and bully it into submission with goo and slime and yet, tragically, it still looked like a second-hand wig. Which had fallen into the toilet and been quickly wiped down with a dirty tea towel before being sent out to catch the 8.02 train. At least if my hair looked a bit like a haystack sometimes, I didn’t have the embarrassment of everyone knowing I’d spent hours making it look that way.

  I perched on the suitcase rack, keeping myself to myself, and pictured her, aged twenty-five, totally bald except for a few sticky wisps, sobbing in the doctor’s office, being told it was all down to over-use of her beloved straighteners . . .

  School that day was, as usual, OK, but pretty much just something to look forward to the end of. On Tuesday lunchtimes my friends Katie and Katy had badminton and I, being completely devoid of any sporting ability, had lunch by myself. On this particular Tuesday, I had to go into town to replace the sandwich I’d carefully made for myself and then left in the fridge as I’d rushed out of the door that morning.

  I bought a stand-in and found a bench to sit on by the church, away from the shopping centre where Jade and Jenni and all their self-obsessed friends hang out. I rummaged for the local newspaper in my bag and searched through for the article about the theatre that my dad had told me to read. For some reason I felt my heart start to thump quite fast as I read it.

  Dad had been looking at the paper over toast that morning as I’d lifted my sleep-filled arm to pour my coffee, trying to get my eyes to come to terms with the fact I was awake and I needed them to stay open.

  There was an ear-splitting clink as Dad put his mug down without looking and caught the edge of his plate. If he’d noticed, he did a great impression of someone who hadn’t, cheerfully turning the page of his newspaper without a thought for my eardrums.

  ‘Hey Zoë, look at this – they’ve got a lottery grant to do up the old Hemingford Theatre – you know, the one near the library that’s all dark and boarded up? That’s great news! It’s a lovely building. They’re looking for actors to be in their opening plays – look!’

  Dad’s a morning person, in case you hadn’t guessed. And today, on top of this, he was in one of his excitable moods. As I’d swayed over to the breakfast bar bearing my hot mug of caffeinated elixir in one hand, rubbing my determinedly unconscious face with the other, I marvelled at his ability to be so perky so early.

  ‘Dad, I’m not an actor – yet. Anyway, they don’t want schoolgirls for their play; they don’t mean me.’

  ‘No, no, they do, Zo – read it.’ He practically shoved the paper into my face, and he wasn’t having it when I grimaced and batted him away. He was like a puppy or something, yapping and jumping around your feet, making you happy and annoyed at the same time.

  People say he’s an eccentric – and that it’s only right, because he’s a lecturer. They love it when they can put you neatly into a pigeon-hole like that. They conveniently overlook the fact he just teaches media studies at a further education college, not English literature at Cambridge or Oxford or somewhere like that. He can be so ditzy sometimes, he makes me feel like I’m the adult – anything involving coordination or memory stumps him. Some days it’s hilarious. Some days, not so much.

  ‘It’s a youth project thingy, a lot of different short plays – all different ages and experience – for an opening showcase. There are auditions soon, in a couple of weeks I think it said. You should go along. You’d be great.’ He jumped up and grabbed his coat from the hallway, pulling it on with half a piece of peanut-buttered toast still in his hand.

  ‘Promise me you’ll read it, and log on to the site and have a look, OK? It sounds like an opportunity.’

  I stared, imagining the greasy streaks he’d probably just made on the inside of his coat sleeve, and just nodded and mmhmmed. He waved goodbye, grabbed his briefcase and disappeared through the back door.

  I figured I’d read the paper on the train. I dropped it by my bag as I took my coffee and slumped through into the living room to turn on the TV. I had to concentrate on averting my eyes from the hall mirror then, because I could feel my hair was sticking up in stupid, pillow-sculpted clumps, which I really did not need to see.

  I knew full well, as I put on morning TV and let myself get sucked into watching it, that I’d end up leaving it till the last minute to get in the shower. I knew I’d probably end up having to run to get the train again, but I let myself watch anyway. And sure enough, I was legging it through the front door twenty minutes later, forgetting my lunch. At least I managed to keep my promise to Dad, grabbing the newspaper on my way out and stuffing it into my bag as I ran to the station. Mornings neve
r get any easier.

  Sitting in the grey daylight by the church, absorbed in my own quiet little space, reading about the theatre, I felt all this unexpected excitement tingling in me. Drama was the only thing at school I really enjoyed and felt like I was good at. Those lessons were the only time I felt like I could let out all the stuff that was bottled up in me.I could be outspoken or glamorous, or anything else just as out of character, and it didn’t matter because it wasn’t really me – I was acting. Thinking I might get the chance to perform properly, in a real production in a real theatre instead of just a school play, made me buzz with anticipation.

  The school plays I’d been in were fun but always felt a bit half-hearted. Plus there was always the same politics with the casting, with the same people always fighting over the best parts, not because they really wanted them but because they thought they ought to be first choice. It’d always be someone from Jade and Jenni’s pack that got them because they made the most fuss about it, or Minnie and Clara because they were the prettiest and thinnest. If I could escape all those cliques and pigeon-holes and really just act . . .

  A sudden, cold breeze brought me out of my thoughts and when I looked at my mobile to check the time, I realised it was too late to look at the theatre website before afternoon lessons. I’d have to rush to even get to class in time. So I had to wait till my last lesson was over and rush home to beat Dad to the computer. It didn’t take me long to find the page about the youth theatre projects and the audition times. As I wrote down all the details of the auditions, I had to tell myself not to get too excited too soon.

  I figured if I let my expectations get too high, I’d only be disappointed. And I’ve been through enough disappointment in my time to know it’s worth making an effort to avoid. Nothing’s more disappointing than having your mum go off and leave you when you’re too young to understand why. That might sound like a weird way to describe it, ‘disappointing’, like it’s just a bit of an understatement. And I suppose I’m being a bit sarcastic, or ironic or whatever, like I’m often told I am, but real, deep disappointment can cut you right to your core. I was so little when she left, I didn’t understand then. I never really believed it was for good. I imagined she’d just gone out, like she had so many times before, and she’d be back again soon. The truth didn’t hit me in a big, devastating wave. It hit me in little bits, over and over again. Each bit of proof I was wrong was like a vicious little piece of the painful truth coming out. Every time there was an unexpected knock at the door and it wasn’t her. Every time the post came on birthdays or holidays, or when I’d passed an exam or won a prize, and there was no card – no letter to say she was proud. Every time I came down for breakfast and she wasn’t sitting at the kitchen table, holding Dad’s hand, explaining why she’d had to go, admitting it was a mistake, saying sorry. My heart would split open at the bottom and hope would drop out of it. X = the grand sum of a million and one small but utterly crushing disappointments.

  Not that I’m angling for sympathy. I know feeling sorry for yourself shouldn’t win you any prizes, I’m just explaining why I didn’t want to feel the excitement I was feeling. I just wanted to be able to be positive without getting too emotional before I knew if I had a chance, that’s all.

  The auditions would be mostly ‘cold readings’, the site said. Yikes, that meant having some play you’d never seen before thrust into your hand and having to just be brilliant on the spot. No pressure then. And, just to add to the cringe factor, it said if you were going for musical parts you should prepare a song and bring sheet music! Now I’m not big on musicals, but what if there was something with singing that sounded really good on the day? I couldn’t rule myself out.

  I felt like someone had just nudged a big red panic button on the back of my head. I only had one weekend and one week of evenings to get ready. Why couldn’t they do them the weekend after half-term instead of the one before? I grabbed my diary and started blocking out chunks of time to concentrate on preparing, like it was a revision timetable (only one I actually expected to stick to).

  That week, I spent every spare minute picking up plays from Dad’s shelves and reading out random passages. Lovely Katie came over one evening and was my audience-of-one and prompter. I got hold of some sheet music for musicals I knew, so I could practise the songs without having to rely on my very sketchy music-reading skills. I think Dad was surprised at how much work I was doing. Instead of watching TV or sitting at the computer, I was in my room, singing or monologuing into my mirror. Every couple of hours, Dad would knock on the door, give me a grin, a thumbs-up or a cup of tea and then scurry off again. I think he was just happy to have the living room to himself, but I felt good that he seemed so pleased I was putting the effort in.

  School almost got more bearable that week, just because I had something to look forward to that no one else knew about. My secret was like a shield I could use in the corridors – when the Katies weren’t around and I had to dodge nasty comments from Jade and Jenni’s lot on my own, it felt like it mattered a little bit less.

  I’m not sure any amount of practice could have prepared me for arriving on the actual day, though. When I got out of the car that Saturday and saw people everywhere, I was hit by the overwhelming noise. Swarms of people chatted nervously and excitedly outside – some people seemed to be in huddles with teachers or coaches, some were even limbering up their singing voices right there in the street. These were all people I’d be competing with. And, worse, I spotted some people from school, Laurel and Fi, two of Jade’s mates, ‘singing’ and flicking their hair about.

  I was frozen to the spot while my heart and soul were already making their escape, sprinting away down the street. I was standing there, just where I’d stepped out of the car, clutching the door with my left hand like it was a protective force field, my knuckles whitening. And then Dad read my mind. He leaned over from the driver’s side and found my other hand. Coming out of my trance, I leaned back into the car. He was smiling, softly and seriously as he squeezed my little-girl hand tightly in his big dad hand.

  ‘You can do it,’ he said.

  Chapter 2

  I put on my best ‘focused’ face and headed straight for the entrance, paying as little attention to the crowds of people as I could. I felt shaky all over, but I was going to do this and Dad was going to be proud of me.

  Looking around reception for a noticeboard or something with some kind of instruction, or a list of audition times or productions – anything, I saw a girl sitting alone on a row of chairs by the windows. She was looking as nervous as I felt, bent over a script, chewing her thumbnail and jiggling her feet. It surprised me how easy it was for me to go over and speak to her; I’d usually be more shy about that stuff.

  ‘Hi. Do you mind if I sit here?’ I asked.

  She looked up at me and smiled. Her eyes looked sort of restless and wild but somehow still really friendly. ‘Mmhmm,’ she said, nodding and then looking back down at her page. That confused me.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Oh! No! Sorry, I mean go ahead.’ She let out a nervy giggle and waved at the chairs next to her with her script. ‘Sorry. Brain scramble.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ I offered as I sat down. ‘I’m so nervous. I feel like I’m getting exam results or something.’

  ‘Oh my God. Me too.’ She virtually spun in her chair to face me and then pressed her hand to the top of her head as if she thought her brain might pop out of there. ‘Sooo nervous. I just hate thinking I’m going to have people watching me and judging me – which is basically what auditions are, so I really don’t know what I’m doing here!’

  She made such a hilarious face then – a sort of crazed mixture of quizzical panic and wonder – that I burst out laughing. Thankfully, instead of taking it the wrong way, she laughed too. I decided right away that she was brilliant.

  ‘Urrrrgh,’ she said, ‘I wish they’d hurry up with the lists and stuff. I asked a woman on the desk there, who seem
s to have disappeared now, where all the information was and she said they were bringing it all out on boards in about five or ten minutes. That was fifteen minutes ago. I mean. Come. On . . . Oh, I’m Gemma, by the way.’

  ‘Hi. Zoë.’ I smiled.

  It was another ten minutes before the boards finally emerged and Gemma and I chatted easily while we waited. She sort of looked like a doll. She was small with shiny, almost-black hair, poker straight, with a perfect, neat fringe, porcelain-white skin and huge, round, turquoise eyes. Her subtle, perfectly neat black eyeliner framed just the tops of her eyes and flicked daintily at the outer edges. I wondered how she got it that perfect. But as surreally neat as she looked, she was totally chaotic when she spoke, and not the least bit prim or artificial. As reception started to fill up with all the people from outside, it already felt like I had a friend. She seemed much calmer for talking with me, and that made me feel less nervous too, which made so much difference when the hoards started to push and shove. It got harder and harder to read everything as we all gradually became one teetering heap of squashed bodies.

  ‘Come over here.’ Gemma grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the herd. She had a notebook and beckoned me over to sit with her on some steps where it was quieter. ‘I’ve copied all the times and stuff down – come and have a look at what you want to do.’ We huddled round her notes and made our plans together. There were six auditions I wanted to go to and Gemma picked five. We arranged to meet back in reception for lunch and said we’d meet up again at five-thirty when we’d both be done.

  My first audition was horrible. It was for this play about a dinner party, and the woman holding the session was terrifying. You had to queue outside the room, and you got to see a bit of the script and character descriptions while you waited, so you could see which parts you wanted to go for. But when I told this woman which part I wanted to try, she was like, ‘Oh, no dear, I don’t think you’re right for that,’ and she made this sharp, pointy face, which I think was supposed to be a smile but was about as pleasant as having your foot stamped on by someone in kitten heels. She made me read this other part and then as I read the lines she kept interrupting me to tell me to do it a different way. Which doesn’t exactly build your confidence.