The Secrets of Primrose Square

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘Hey, how are you doing back here?’ Nancy asked, to total silence in return.

  ‘Melissa?’ Nancy gently persisted. ‘You okay, honey?’

  ‘Fine,’ she replied, looking down at the floor.

  ‘Is something upsetting you?’ Nancy asked her. ‘Did something happen when I was working?’

  Silence from Melissa. Which was so unlike her, Nancy thought.

  ‘Whatever it is,’ she persisted, ‘you can talk to me, you know that.’

  ‘Nothing happened,’ Melissa eventually said. ‘At least, nothing happened to me. It’s more like . . . I found out something. By accident, I mean.’

  ‘What are you talking about, honey?’ Nancy asked, growing more and more concerned about her.

  ‘Nancy, I think I.’

  Nancy looked at her little friend for a moment, at her ghostly white, worried face and made a snap decision. Seconds later, she was striding down to the cast and crew tannoy and making an announcement that went right over Diego’s head. She’d be shot at dawn for this later on, no doubt, but just for the moment, she didn’t care two hoots.

  ‘Cast and crew break has been extended to one full hour,’ Nancy said crisply into the tannoy. ‘See you then, everyone.’

  A hot, Latin glare at Nancy from Diego, which she pointedly ignored.

  ‘Come on,’ said Nancy, firmly gripping her by the hand. ‘I’m taking you back to Primrose Square. Now, honey. Let them fire me for it, if they want, I don’t care! Right now, you are far more important.’

  Susan

  BUTLER’S COFFEE SHOP

  One week later

  To her surprise, he was already in the coffee shop ahead of her, waiting at a relatively quiet table for two by the window. For some reason, this pleased Susan. He automatically stood up to greet her when she came in and for a minute they talked over each other, the way you do whenever nerves take hold and you can’t stop yourself.

  ‘Thank you so much for meeting with me,’ she began to say.

  ‘It’s no problem at all, I was glad to get your call,’ he said at the exact same time.

  A waiter appeared to take orders; both asked for Americanos.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ he said with a grimace, ‘I’m in training right now, and you’re supposed to cut out caffeine, but what the hell.’

  Then a moment of stilted silence, while Susan regarded him from across the table. He was so physically huge, he seemed to dwarf the table, just by sitting at it.

  All this time, she thought. All along, I blamed you and you silently took it and now I somehow have to try and find words to apologise.

  ‘You don’t have to say anything, you know,’ Josh said, almost like he was reading her mind. ‘It’s okay. I get it. I just hope you and me are cool now, that’s all.’

  ‘No, it’s not, Josh,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s not okay. None of this is okay.’

  ‘Oh, right, yeah,’ he said, slumping back in the chair behind him. ‘Sorry, I spoke before I thought there. You mean with Ella being . . . like . . . gone . . . and everything.’

  ‘I mean Ella, of course,’ she said, wincing a little at his choice of words, but reminding herself that there was actually a good heart beating underneath it all. ‘But I’m talking about you, too, Josh. Because I misjudged you. God, I was so vile to you – really horrible. Then I find out, totally by chance, that instead of goading Ella on to try out even harder and harder drugs, you were actually the one trying to stop her. All along, I blamed you, when I really should have been down on my knees thanking my lucky stars she had a friend like you.’

  He said nothing as their coffees arrived. Just shrugged and looked out the window, embarrassed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Josh, she said simply. ‘I really am so very sorry for all the terrible things I did to you and said about you—’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not okay,’ she answered. ‘When I think of myself, standing outside your front window night after night . . . ’

  ‘Yeah . . . that was pretty freaky all right . . . ’

  ‘Jesus, how you and your parents didn’t sue the arse off me, I’ll never know.’

  ‘My dad wanted to at one point,’ Josh said, starting to fidget and crack his knuckles, as if he was nervous. ‘He’s a barrister, you know? And he was all on about slander and assault and a whole shitload of other stuff too.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Susan said. She’d met Josh’s dad once or twice and he really was terrifying.

  ‘But I wouldn’t let him,’ Josh told her.

  ‘You wouldn’t?’ Susan said. ‘You’d have been perfectly entitled to. No one would have blamed you.’

  ‘I didn’t sue,’ Josh went on, still cracking at his knuckles, ‘because I kept thinking, what would Ella do if she was here now? And you know what she’d have done, Mrs H?’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Susan, overwhelmed at what she was hearing.

  ‘She’d have told my folks to get over it and to cop themselves on. Then, knowing her, she’d probably have reminded them that there are refugees coming from Syria who’d kill to have all of our first world problems.’

  Susan nodded and smiled. Because yes, that’s pretty much exactly what Ella would have said.

  ‘I do miss her, you know,’ Josh eventually said.

  ‘I know you do – now,’ Susan said, really believing it.

  ‘No one ever got that she and I were friends,’ he went on. ‘But we were, you know. We really were. I loved the way she’d challenge me and get me to think about things in a different way and . . . ’

  ‘And?’ Susan said, liking the way this conversation was going.

  ‘She cared so much about everything,’ Josh told her, ‘and she made me care too. About stuff I never even considered before. You know, like the Gaza Strip. And Syria. And people who wear fur. Jeez, she’d give me hell for eating red meat,’ he added, with a smirk. ‘Even when I tried to explain to her that it was for training. She just told me to cop myself on and that there was more protein in eggs anyway.’

  ‘That was my Ella, all right.’ Susan smiled.

  ‘In fact . . . ’ he began, but he broke off before finishing.

  ‘Go on,’ Susan prompted gently.

  ‘Well . . . everyone said she and I were such opposites and I know we were. But the way we sparked off each other was brilliant. And then we’d laugh ourselves sick . . . and . . . you remember how she used to laugh with her whole body?’

  ‘I remember.’ Susan smiled again.

  ‘It feels weird saying this to you of all people,’ he went on, sounding a lot more comfortable now, ‘but I kind of fancied Ella. I did ask her out once, you know . . . ’

  ‘You did?’ Susan said, surprised, but then this was news to her.

  ‘She said we were better as friends, though. And she was right too. I’d never had a mate like her before and I never will again.’

  ‘What matters to me now,’ Susan said, leaning across the table towards him, ‘is that I know you tried to help her. And there really are no words for me to say how grateful I am to you for that.’

  ‘The drugs weren’t her, you know,’ he said, after a thoughtful pause. ‘She was just experimenting, the way we all were, that was it. It started the night we had that charity sleep-out, do you remember?’

  ‘Vividly,’ Susan told him.

  ‘And for Ella, it just went from there. You know how wild she was: once she’d made up her mind to do a thing, there was no stopping her. But for some reason, the night of that party last year, Ella got unlucky. It’s shite, I know, and it can’t bring Ella back, but I promise you, Mrs Hayes, that’s all it was.’

  ‘I know,’ She said softly. ‘And call me Susan, please.’

  ‘It all was that idiot Marc Casey’s doing,’ he went on. ‘Producing pills out of a sandwich bag and claiming that they were beans.’

  Which was the street name for MDMA, Susan didn’t have to be told, cut with G
od only knows what. She’d even heard rat poison or sometimes bath salts after the post-mortem, but a year on, that was still something she was actively trying to block out.

  ‘You needn’t tell me about Marc Casey,’ Susan said. ‘I have big plans to help him back on the straight and narrow.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Oh yes, you just watch this space,’ Susan went on. ‘I’ve already contacted his mother.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘Marc’s family, as you can imagine, were worried sick that the new information we now have might lead to Ella’s case being reopened.’

  ‘It won’t, though, will it?’ Josh asked worriedly.

  ‘No,’ Susan said sadly. ‘But I know the truth and, as far as I’m concerned, that’s all I ever wanted out of this.’

  She did, however, make it very clear to Marc’s family that she had one single condition for not pressing charges against their son. Namely, that he check himself into St Michael’s Wellness Centre for immediate treatment. If they can’t straighten him out there, Susan figured, then no one can. Plus the thought of Dr Ciara and Bunny and Emily and Bungalow Bill getting their paws on Marc Casey and sorting him out made her smile.

  ‘Well, at least one good thing has come out of it,’ Josh added, with a casual shrug.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’m volunteering now. Ella was always on my case about how I came from a privileged background and that it meant I had a duty to give something back.’

  Susan smiled at that. It sounded so like Ella, it was almost as if she was sitting at the table in between them.

  ‘You know the Narcotics Anonymous group in Temple Bar?’ he went on. ‘Well, I’ve agreed to help out there once a week. My rugby coach is going apeshit about it, but . . . I think Ella would have liked it. So I’m doing it for her, really. To hell with the rest of them anyway.’

  Susan gave him a warm smile. ‘She’d have loved that, Josh,’ she found the words to say. ‘And thank you.’

  ‘In fact, they were on at me to maybe give a talk about drugs at school,’ he said. ‘If that was cool with you, that is,’ he added a bit warily. ‘You know about how Ella was the least likely person to ever turn into a user. But that if it can happen to her, it could happen to any one of us.’

  ‘I think that’s a fantastic idea,’ Susan told him, really meaning it too. ‘And who knows? Maybe it’s something I could help out with too, if you’d like?’

  One life is gone, she thought. But maybe, just maybe, others can be saved. Maybe you didn’t die needlessly after all, my darling.

  ‘That would be great, thanks.’ Josh grinned and, for a momentary flash, Susan could see the charm in him. The eager-to-please, sweeter side to him that Ella picked up on right away.

  ‘And Mrs H?’ he asked. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I brought you something.’

  ‘You did?’

  He bent down under the table and started to fumble about a bit, then produced a slightly bashed-looking bunch of flowers.

  ‘These are for you,’ he said, looking a bit shy as he passed them over the table.

  ‘Oh Josh, there really was no need,’ Susan began to say, but then her voice caught at the back of her throat.

  Tiger lilies. He’d gone and bought her tiger lilies.

  ‘It’s the weirdest thing,’ Josh said. ‘For some reason, I just saw them and thought of Ella. Isn’t that, like, seriously weird?’

  Melissa

  18 PRIMROSE SQUARE

  ‘More eyeliner, or less?’

  ‘Dopey question. More, of course – you can never have enough eyeliner! And help me with my fake tan, will you? It’s starting to dribble down my arm!’

  Melissa and her pal Hayley were upstairs in her bedroom, frantically getting ready for the big opening night and messing around with make-up, which neither of them really had the first clue about.

  Then a text message came through to Melissa’s phone.

  ‘OMG,’ she yelped, reading the message. ‘You won’t believe this, but it’s from Abby Graham!’

  ‘Abby Graham?’ said Hayley. ‘After she’s been such a mean girl? What does she say?’

  ‘I hear you’re both off to a big opening night tonight,’ Melissa read, still shocked that Abby would contact her. ‘VIP tickets, the whole works. Just wanted to say enjoy and see you Monday.’

  ‘She’s only being nice because we’re in with the in-crowd now,’ Hayley said. ‘Just ignore her, Mel. Abby Graham is just a wagon, everyone knows that.’

  ‘Or . . . ’ Melissa said thoughtfully, playing with her phone.

  ‘Or what?’ said Hayley, momentarily abandoning her fake tan.

  ‘Or we could be kind and take her back a programme from tonight. Maybe even one that the cast have signed. Eric always says that when you’re kind to people who’ve been horrible to you, they turn into complete pussycats. What do you think?’

  Hayley smiled fondly at her best friend. ‘I think what everyone says about you is true, Melissa. You really are like an angel.’

  *

  ‘Girls?’ Susan’s voice called up the stairs. ‘Come downstairs, quick! It’s time to go, and wait till you see what’s waiting for us outside the front door!’

  Hayley and Melissa legged it down the stairs, both wearing high heels that neither of them were used to, but feeling so impossibly glamorous, the pain was well worth it.

  ‘Well, well, well, look at these two supermodels!’ said Jayne, who was over by the fireplace sipping at a glass of fizz, as Eric stood right beside her. Susan had asked them both in for a little pre-show drink and now they all gave a ripple of applause as both girls did an impromptu catwalk show for everyone.

  ‘Amazing!’ said Eric, clapping.

  ‘The blue is stunning on you, Melissa, love,’ said Jayne kindly. ‘It’s so your colour. And as for the pink on you, Hayley? It’s to die for.’

  ‘Blue is the colour of loyalty and wisdom.’ Eric nodded and smiled. ‘And pink is the colour of kindness. Great choices, ladies.’

  ‘Now come on, everyone,’ said Susan, starting to marshal everyone out the front door, ‘we need to make a move or we’ll be late. Imagine if Nancy had to hold the curtain just for us? And you have to see what she’s organised for us outside!’

  Everyone grabbed coats and bags, then scrambled out the front door, to see a giant white stretch limo waiting just for them.

  ‘OMG!’ Melissa squealed delightedly. ‘You mean Nancy did all this, just for us?’

  ‘This is turning into the best night ever!’ Hayley screeched, as they all clambered inside, marvelling at the white leather interiors, not to mention the fact that there was a large jar of chocolates for everyone to dip into, while they drove the short distance to the National Theatre. Hayley started to do selfies from just about every angle, as Susan quietly gripped Melissa’s arm.

  ‘And you never know, love,’ she said, looking utterly beautiful in a crushed wine-coloured velvet coat that she’d gone and bought specially. ‘This may not be the only surprise that you’re in for tonight.’

  Nancy

  NATIONAL THEATRE

  Opening night. There was a great theatre in-gag about opening nights that was doing the rounds at the National, about George Bernard Shaw, no less. Apparently he wrote to Winston Churchill, inviting him to the premiere of Pygmalion. ‘Bring a friend,’ Shaw’s invitation read. ‘If you have one.’

  And Churchill’s pithy response? To send his apologies saying he couldn’t make the opening, but that he’d attend on the second night instead. ‘If you have one.’

  Nancy hated opening nights. Really hated them with a passion. She was a bag of nerves and could quite happily have spent the evening with her head buried down the loo, but sadly that wasn’t an option. She was backstage in the dressing rooms before the show, where everyone was in a state of heightened anxiety, dispensing good luck cards and thoughtful little gifts in each room she popped her head into, to wish everyone a cheery ‘go
od luck’.

  ‘Now you must remember, darling,’ Lady Catherine admonished Nancy, ‘it’s bad luck to say good luck on opening night. Say “break a leg” instead, and then that covers us for all eventualities.’

  ‘And I have a little something that’ll bring luck to us all,’ said her dressing room-mate, Mrs Bennet. ‘Here!’ she said, delightedly producing a bottle of fizz and putting it into the minibar conveniently tucked into the corner of the tiny, windowless room. ‘A little something for after the show. To celebrate what I know will be a great success!’

  ‘Just so long as she doesn’t get at it till after the curtain comes down,’ quipped Lady C, with a half-wink in Nancy’s direction.

  Then she rapped on the men’s dressing room door, where Mr Darcy was struggling into a pair of Regency white knee breeches as Alan came over to Nancy with a little gift.

  ‘For you,’ he said, shyly handing over a little posy of roses. The cutest, neatest bouquet you ever saw. ‘Just to say . . . well, you’ve been a joy to work with, from day one. You really have.’

  Nancy caught a glimpse of the two of them reflected back at her in the dressing room mirror and it made her temporarily forget her nerves and smile. Mr Wickham in full top coat and tails, as she stood opposite him in her opening night bright red cocktail dress, which she was wearing out of superstition more than anything else, really. Her mum had bought it for her years ago and it had always brought her luck.

  ‘Wow, thanks, Alan,’ she said, genuinely touched. ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll knock ’em dead.’

  Most astonishingly of all, even Diego was actually being nice to everyone.

  ‘You must all keep energy up in Act Two,’ he finger-wagged in the green room before curtain up, as everyone nervously paced around. ‘And all will be good. Very good, even.’

  Then he turned to Nancy and spoke more quietly. ‘I see there are something little for you. Delivery. In the scene dock area. You need to go there – now.’

  Bewildered, Nancy did as she was told and walked out of the green room to the semi-darkness of the scene dock backstage left, where the props table was laden down with fans, reticules and all manner of regency knick-knacks, all set for Scene One.