“You have sisters?”
“Four.” He holds up a hand, wiggling his fingers pointedly. “And a brother. But he’s only eighteen months old, so he’s not exactly much help.”
“Wow. Four sisters?” I wince.
George closes his eyes and puts on a martyred expression. “Four.”
“Are any of them coming to the show?”
“God, no. If I was doing the make-up for Corrie, they’d be well into it. Theatre, not so much. They think it’s weird.” He shrugs. “Are yours?” And then he catches himself and nods. “No. Of course not, because you’ve got your little secret thing going on, haven’t you?”
“Look, I—”
“No, no.” He interrupts me. “You need to get going, and it’s none of my business. It’s your life and everything – but have you maybe thought that you should just tell your mum? She seems really lovely, and even if you don’t tell her, she’s going to find out sooner or later…”
“And I’ve made it this far without her knowing, so let’s cross our fingers it’s later, shall we?”
“Like I say, your life. But it was good, wasn’t it?”
“Today? It was amazing. And they all looked incredible.”
“And you don’t think that thing about dress rehearsals is true, right?”
“What thing?”
“A good dress means a bad first show?”
As soon as he says it I realize it’s been scratching away at me all afternoon. A good dress rehearsal means a bad show. Always. If you believe in theatre superstitions, that is…
I squeeze his shoulder. “Don’t overthink it. We’re good. They were good, we were good. It’s going to be fine. Everyone’s worked so hard. We’ll make it good. Like you said, we can’t afford not to, right?”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
Every single traffic light is red.
All of them, on every single road along my bus route.
We crawl, crawl, crawl along, stuck in the middle of an endless stream of cars, vans, lorries and other buses – none of them going anywhere fast. All the while, the second hand of my watch keeps ticking around. Ticking the time away.
I should have thought about this. I should have remembered that any bus takes twice as long in Friday night traffic. I should. I’m supposed to be good at the timing thing: I have to be. How can I keep everyone in a production running on schedule – how can I give Tommy Knight a hard time about taking an extra five seconds to change a shirt – if I’m always hopelessly late for everything?
I stare at my watch as though looking at it will slow down the flow of minutes, and promise the universe that if it lets me get home in time for dinner, I will never ever ever be late again.
Or at least not as often.
The universe answers with a phone call.
Of course it does.
“Hope, this is very disappointing…”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’m on the bus, but the traffic…”
“I don’t want apologies. I want you here, at home, where I asked you to be.”
“I’ll be there soon. I’m only five minutes away…”
In the background I can hear Faith’s voice and Dad’s too, low, and Grace laughing. A door shuts and the sound of the rest of my family vanishes.
“Why are you even on the bus? Why didn’t you just walk like you usually do?”
Ah.
There is no bus from the Square Globe to home.
“I had to…there was…” My brain scrambles to come up with something – anything – and goes emphatically, majestically blank. “It’s a long story, but I’m just down the road.”
“How long did you say you’re going to be? We’re all waiting for you.”
“I know, I know.” I stand up and peer down the bus, down the road ahead. The traffic goes on for ever. “I’ll try and get off – it’ll be quicker.” I squeeze my way down to the front of the packed bus, edging between other passengers – most of whom look at me with irritation – and tap on the driver’s partition, pointing at the bus stop just ahead. It’s meant to be for a different route number, but it’s not like stopping here to let me off is going to delay everybody else. He nods and flicks on the indicator to pull in.
My mum’s voice, still on the line, is far away yet oh-so-sharp as the bus doors creak open and I step down onto the pavement.
“Just get home, Hope. Now.”
The house takes on a slightly different feel when my sisters are home, even from the street. There’s a sort of Gracey-ness about the whole place, and Faith’s car is parked right outside the gate. It’s just as neat and prissy as she is.
The thing is, I love my sisters. I do. But I love them more when they’re not actually around. As soon as they’re here, I’m the baby again; a kid who doesn’t know anything. And what makes it worse is that somehow, even though I don’t mean to, I fall right into that. It’s a role I’m destined to play every single time they come back for the weekend, and it sucks.
I kick the door shut behind me and drop my bag on the floor. There’s Grace’s overnight bag at the bottom of the stairs – the same old rucksack she’s had for years, and the two tote bags she always has to bring with it because only half her stuff actually fits inside. And there’s Faith’s bag, although it’s not really a bag, but some kind of complicated contraption made out of leather and brass and quite possibly the tears of small children. It’s probably puppy leather, come to think of it.
The whole house smells like Mum’s Proper Cooking, which is unusual at this time of year, when she’s busy with award-show fittings and being whisked off to posh hotels to go over designs with stylists and stars, and dinner’s more likely to be whatever we’ve got hanging around in the fridge and needs to be eaten before it goes off. When I was little and she was still working on theatre productions, she and Dad used to give these dinner parties for the theatre company at the end of a run, and I remember sitting on the stairs and listening to them talking and laughing as they ate, always trying to catch a glimpse of them all through the half-open door. My sisters always shut their doors and complained about the noise, but I wanted those evenings to last for ever. They made me feel like I was sitting on the edge of something special.
I’m not sure Faith and Grace are quite in the same league, but at least dinner still smells good – and I am not going to get into a fight with my sisters.
Not even Faith.
“Hope? Is that you?” Mum leans out of the kitchen door into the hall.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“You promised you wouldn’t be late. You promised me you’d be here.”
“I’m sorry!”
“I just expected better from you, that’s all. I don’t know what’s got into you lately – you come in at all hours of the evening, you don’t reply to messages, you don’t answer your phone, you dress differently… Is everything all right?”
“What? Yes! No, I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
She isn’t just annoyed that I’ve let her down – she’s worried about me. A spike of guilt stabs my insides, but it fades quickly enough. Right now, I just need to be normal.
“I got home as soon as I could – I really did try to get back earlier.” I kick my shoes under the chair by the front door and, taking a deep, calming breath, walk through to the kitchen.
It’s like walking right back into a set – everything that made it our kitchen when I left this morning seems to have been swept away and replaced. The fruit bowl in the middle of the table no longer contains three wrinkled apples and a banana that’s so overripe it’s almost an entirely new shade of brown, a spool of white cotton thread, a grey button and two bits of junk mail about UPVC windows. No, now it contains an artfully-arranged pile of apricots and three pomegranates – and it’s surrounded by candlesticks. Two of which I’ve not seen before.
Be. Normal.
“Those are nice – where are they from?”
“Oh, I saw them the other day
in town. Your sister picked them up on her way – didn’t you, Faith?”
Tucked away in the corner, sitting on the end of the old church pew where Mum likes to pile up her fabrics (which, like everything else in here, has been miraculously cleared and cleaned), my older sister raises a half-empty wine glass and smiles at me ironically.
I smile back, equally ironically. “Thanks for the offer of a lift, by the way. Really appreciate it.”
The corners of her mouth twitch.
Be normal. Don’t get in a fight. Normal normal normal normal.
“Do you need a hand with anything?” I look at the pristine table, already laid and set with dishes of rapidly cooling food. Mum follows my gaze and sighs dramatically. I’ll take that as a no. “Okay, give me two minutes to change. I’ll be right back…”
From the hall, I hear Mum calling after me. “Tell Grace to get out of the shower while you’re there. You were so long, she thought she might as well go and have one now.”
I make a run for it up the stairs. I need a shower too, and clothes that don’t smell like the floor of the production office (damp and Wotsits, with a hint of stale biscuit and the faintest top note of oil), but it looks like getting clean isn’t really an option now. A quick-change of my own, and I’ll be ready to face an evening with my family. After all, I’ve managed a whole day of actors…
The bathroom door is firmly shut. Steam creeps out from underneath it, and I can hear someone singing over the noise of the shower.
“Graaaaaaaace!” I bang on the door. She stops singing…then carries on as though nothing has changed since she moved out.
Staring at the firmly locked bathroom door, I guess nothing really has.
“How’s it going with your little work experience thing, then?” Faith makes a delicate circle in the air with her fork, jabbing it into a piece of chicken and then popping it into her mouth with a smirk. I’m almost disappointed she doesn’t miss and stick it in her eye, particularly when she pulls a face at the fact it’s gone cold. She could at least make some effort – like I am. “What is it you’re doing again? Marketing?”
“Hope?” Mum taps the edge of her plate with her knife. “Your sister asked you a question.”
“Hmm? Oh. Sorry. I wasn’t listening.” I ignore Mum’s warning look and poke at a couple of peas. My fork misses, making a horrible scraping sound against my plate.
“Faith was asking about the office at the Square Globe,” says Grace, heaping tepid mashed potato onto her plate. “Except she wasn’t asking. She was, as usual, being a bitch.” Glancing up at the rest of the table and seeing the dagger-looks Mum, Dad and Faith are giving her, she rolls her eyes and adds, “Jesus, I was kidding?”
Right back to how we always were.
At least Grace is trying, though. Which is more than I can say for our sister.
“It’s okay. I’m learning a lot, and—”
But that’s not what Faith wants to talk about, is it? Only I don’t see it coming until a fraction of a second too late…
“Mmm. Interesting. Great. Sure. And tell us about what you and Tommy Knight did to get in the papers?”
There’s that smile again, the one I remember so well from years sitting across this table from her. The one she’d deploy right before she let some bombshell drop – how she knew I’d failed a test at school, or said or done something. She’d wait and wait…and then? Boom.
Just like now.
Boom.
There’s Dad’s sudden, emphatic coughing; the kind he always does when he’s startled (usually it’s when Mum announces just how much she paid per metre for a roll of fancy fabric). There’s Grace sighing and sitting back in her seat, clearly thinking that she should have told Mum she was busy and couldn’t come home this weekend. And then there’s Mum, looking vaguely confused by all of it.
“Tommy Knight? Isn’t he…?”
“It’s nothing. Ignore her.” I glare at Faith over the table, but it’s too late.
“What’s this about the papers?”
I go cold, then hot.
Then cold again.
Then hot and cold all at the same time.
What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?
I breathe, because breathing seems like a solid place to start.
I’ve got this. I have. I can fix this.
“I’m not in the papers. Tommy Knight’s in the new show at the Earl’s, and there was some stupid photo of him taken on the street and apparently I’m in the background. Like I said – nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing to me…” And Faith plays her trump card, dropping today’s paper on the table, folded open to the celebrity gossip pages. She clears her throat. “Hollywood hotshot Tommy Knight, spotted leaving his hotel earlier this week with a mystery brunette. Knight may be preparing to make his stage debut in the hotly-anticipated production of hit book Piecekeepers, but it looks like he’s still found time to make friends. With his long-term girlfriend Emery Greenway rumoured to be flying over from the States for the opening night gala, it remains to be seen whether his most challenging performance will be to convince her that nothing happened…” She drops the newspaper with a look of triumph.
Oh. My. God.
I’m dead.
No, she’s dead. Sister or not, I’m going to kill her. I really, very am.
The kitchen has gone completely quiet, and four pairs of eyes are looking right at me. There is nowhere to go. No amount of black clothing is going to hide me from this particular spotlight.
“Okay, so first – I was not coming out of his hotel. I was walking down the street with him. Secondly, it’s Tommy Knight. Tommy Knight. And me? Hello? Do you think that’s even likely?” I make a grab for the paper, but Faith is too quick and whips it back under the table.
Mum is staring at me, and Dad…well, he’s gone into full Dad-mode, I can see it in his face. It’s never far away at the best of times, but he falls into the trap of reverting to his Standard Assigned Family Role just like the rest of us, and now his “protective father” gene has been activated. If only he could be convinced to deploy that against his other daughters…or one of them, at least.
I give it one more try.
“Seriously, it’s garbage. It’s just somebody taking a photo and putting it online because oooooh, Tommy Knight. It doesn’t mean anything. Nobody believes any of it, anyway.”
“Faith?” Mum’s voice is very calm and even. “May I see that, please?”
“The papers obviously believed it – enough to print it,” Faith says as she passes the paper across the table and Mum unfolds it carefully, absorbing every word. Absorbing that photo – in which I very, very clearly not only know Tommy Knight but am having a conversation with him.
It’s over.
After what feels like hours, and with every single second of the wait pressing down on me, Mum folds the paper again and smooths her fingers along the creases.
“Hope. Would you mind telling us what’s going on, please?”
I open my mouth – but she holds up a warning hand.
“The truth this time, please. I think it’s clear you’ve not been telling us that for a while – don’t you agree?”
In my head, I hear a silent chorus of everyone who told me I should just come clean.
Well, I hope you’re all pleased with yourselves.
Here goes.
“Okay, fine. So. The truth is that I do know Tommy – but that’s it. We’ve been working together and that’s all there is to it. I promise.”
Mum rests her hands on the table in front of her. “Is it? Tommy Knight, at the Square Globe?”
I know, from her tone, from her eyes, from everything about her, that she’s caught me. She just wants me to admit it.
“No.” I shake my head and dig my fingernails into my palms. “Not there. At the Earl’s. I’ve…I’ve been working at the Earl’s.”
I see every one of their faces when I say it. Dad’s frown, Faith’s look of satisf
action. Grace’s surprise…
And Mum.
Her face doesn’t change – not at all, not even a flicker. Which only makes it worse.
“You’re working at the Earl’s.” Her voice is low and desperately calm. “Doing what? Not, I presume, marketing mail-outs?”
“No.” My own voice, now I hear it, sounds pathetically small and young; like a kid who’s been caught out.
Which I guess is what I am now, isn’t it? That’s how I’ve always seen myself – as just a kid, pretending, hoping nobody finds out she doesn’t know what the hell she’s really doing… And look – it finally happened.
I just wasn’t expecting it to be my family who discovered it.
“I’ve been working on the new show. The Piecekeepers one. As a stage management intern.”
Mum’s face still doesn’t move. “And you’ve been lying to us. To me. All this time.”
She’ll find out sooner or later.
There’s no room for excuses, no way I can ask Priya to cover for me – to lie for me – this time.
I take a deep breath. “Yes.”
Nobody moves. Even the air in the room is completely still – as though none of us are even breathing. We are a tableau: a scene of a family dinner gone wrong. Secrets exposed, cracks opened…we’re an actual theatre cliché.
“I think I’m going to go upstairs,” I say to the silence, and push my chair back. I don’t care that the legs scrape against the floor and squeal loudly. I don’t even care that as I step away from it, the whole thing tips over and falls back with a crash. I walk out and up the stairs and I make it to my room. I close my door, sit on the edge of my bed and look at the posters, the photos of theatres, the model box, the piles of notes from this production sticking out from under the bed where I hid them.
I look at them, and then I calmly pick up my pillow, hold it over my face and scream into it until I can’t scream any more.
When my door opens, I pretend I’m asleep. What I’m actually doing, of course, is lying on my bed in the dark, staring towards my ceiling and wondering how the hell I got myself into this mess. Because it really is a mess. Every time I blink, I see my parents’ faces again: Mum’s disappointment and hurt, Dad’s disbelief and anger. I blink harder and the darkness blurs and smudges over itself. The floorboard next to my desk creaks and my light flicks on…and there’s Mum, a mug of tea in each hand. She sets both mugs on the edge of my desk and studies me for a minute, like I’m one of her dressmaking mannequins.
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