by Lyn Gardner
“Twins, how does it feel to know that you’ll be acting alongside your dad?” asked a reporter.
“Awesome,” said Cosmo. “Just awesome. I know he’s going to help us so much. He’s the best.” Jasper gave a blindingly white smile.
“Cosima, do you think your dad will make a great Captain Hook?” There was a little pause. Then Cosima looked at her dad, smiled very sweetly and said very clearly, “Why, it’s perfect casting. He’ll hardly need to do any acting at all.”
For a split second no one seemed to know quite what to make of this remark but then Jasper Wood slapped his thigh exaggeratedly and said, “My daughter! She’s such a comedian. She cracks me up every time.” Everyone laughed, but to Olivia it looked as if Cosima was holding back tears.
The journalists were all firing questions and Jasper Wood was fielding them in his big booming voice. Olivia’s phone gave a little bleep in her pocket and she pulled it out, glad of the distraction. To her surprise, she saw she had a message from Katie Wilkes-Cox. Olivia hadn’t heard from Katie since the afternoon at the Duke’s Theatre when she’d come to pick up her things from her dressing room before leaving The Sound of Music in disgrace. Pale and subdued, she had thanked Olivia and Tom for saving her life and apologised for having tried to destroy their friendship. Olivia had never expected to hear from her again. She read the message.
Hello, Olivia. After everything that happened I expect you’re surprised that I’m getting in touch. But this is important. I’ve got some info that will really interest you. Please call me asap. Katie Wilkes-Cox.
Olivia read the message again. She was intrigued but also wary. What did Katie want? Time and time again Katie had proved herself untrustworthy, and although she had seemed genuinely sorry for everything she had done, Olivia knew that she should be cautious. Eel leaned over and glanced at the screen.
“Oi,” said Olivia affectionately. “Stop reading my private messages.”
Eel squeezed her sister’s hand. “Don’t even think of answering it, Livy. Delete it,” she warned. “You know what Katie’s like. She’s a spider who spins a web. Don’t get caught up in it.”
Olivia hesitated for a moment. She really wanted to believe that Katie had changed. She had seemed so contrite and broken last time she had seen her. But she’d been fooled by Katie before and got badly hurt because of it. She was curious, though. What information could Katie possibly have that would be of interest to her? She hesitated for a second, then pressed the delete button.
Chapter Six
“Breathe in … and count to three in your head,” said Miss Hanbury. “Hold it, then breathe out, and really try to feel it in your diaphragm.”
Olivia and the rest of her class were upstairs in the small rehearsal room having a voice lesson. Olivia enjoyed voice lessons and found them quite soothing, or she did when there wasn’t a terrible racket coming from the building site next door. She liked the way that the classes made her think hard about breathing, something that most of the time she did without thinking at all. It was the same when she was on the wire or the trapeze: she was suddenly intensely aware of every muscle in her body. She knew it was the same for Eel when she was dancing: the wonderful sense of being in total control and completely in tune with your body.
“Again,” said Miss Hanbury. “One … two … three … hold…”
“This is dumb,” came a loud American voice from the back. Everyone opened their eyes and looked at Cosmo. Miss Hanbury, who was softly spoken and easily flustered, flushed. Quite a lot of the Swan pupils grumbled about voice classes, which were never as exciting as dance or acting or improvisation, but everybody knew how important they were. You couldn’t expect to be heard at the back of a huge theatre unless you could project your voice, and if you were going to take on a role that involved speaking for several hours a night, six nights a week with a matinée thrown in for good measure, you had to know how to use your voice properly or you would damage it very quickly. Cosmo had slid down the side of the wall and was sat unwrapping a piece of gum. He looked up at all the faces staring at him.
“What are you looking at, losers? This class sucks. Breathing! Everybody knows how to breathe. I don’t need lessons in how to do it.” He stood up and sauntered out with a swagger, as if he was daring anyone to challenge him. Cosima seemed uncertain what to do, then registered all the puzzled, almost hostile faces, and scuttled straight after her brother. They could be heard shouting at each other outside in the corridor.
Since their arrival at the Swan, the Wood twins had not made themselves popular. There were two good reasons for this: the first was because they displayed no obvious talent, and if there was one thing that the Swans all admired, it was raw talent and heaps of it. The other was that they were often rude and disruptive. On the first day, two Year Three pupils, Emmy Lovedale and Bola Omayele, had shyly approached Cosmo and asked him for his autograph. He had bawled at them to get out of his way and if they wanted an autograph they should join his fan club.
Cosmo brought his own food to school, strange concoctions that looked as if they belonged in the chemistry lab. Then, in the dining hall their first lunchtime, Cosima’s minders had bundled her straight to the front of the lunch queue, upsetting quite a few people. Cosi had looked apologetic and muttered something about “low blood sugar”, but pushing in was pushing in. Cosmo then plonked himself down uninvited at the table where Kasha Kasparian and his friends were sitting and proceeded to rubbish all British pop music, declaring that American bands were the only ones worth listening to.
The voice class wasn’t the first lesson that the twins had disrupted either. They were just not used to being at school or being two pupils out of many. They didn’t get the concept of putting up your hand before speaking, and just spoke when they felt like it, often over the teachers. They were accustomed to being the sole focus of everyone’s attention and didn’t like it when they weren’t. But the thing that bugged the Swans most was that the twins were just not very good at anything.
Because of this, they were in one of the junior classes for contemporary dance and they hated being in with all the smaller children, some of them as young as eight. In his first lesson, Cosmo had stepped on several pupils’ toes and, rather than apologising for his clumsiness, he’d acted as if the children should be grateful to have touched flesh with one of the famous Wood twins.
Olivia, who was no great dancer herself, had watched aghast as Cosima had completely ignored Miss Taylor’s instructions and flung herself across the room straight into the path of two small girls. They’d all ended up in a bruised heap on the floor and, although she was more shocked than hurt, Cosima had decided to scream the place down. Her wailing brought the twins’ minders rushing aggressively into the room as if they thought Cosima was being murdered. They had ordered all the children to stand against the wall and treated the two crying eight-year-olds who’d been sent flying by Cosima as if they were a tiny Mafia hit squad. They had withdrawn only when India Taylor had fixed them with her withering gaze and enquired if it was quite normal where they came from for grown men to go round bullying small children.
After that incident, Alicia had insisted that the minders stayed outside the building during school hours, although she had had a row on the phone with Jasper Wood about it. But Alicia had stood her ground and the minders now stood on the school steps, occasionally insisting on searching the Swans’ bags as they entered the building.
“They seemed to think that my cheese and tomato baguette might be an offensive weapon,” said Aeysha after she’d had her lunchbox inspected and Georgia’s jazz shoes were examined minutely by the minders who appeared convinced that they might be hand grenades in disguise.
“It’s all so silly!” said Eel, miffed because her before-school dance class had been disrupted while the minders conducted a thorough search of the studio. “They must realise that anyone stupid enough to kidnap the Wood twins would pay millions to give them back again immediately. Imagine spen
ding a moment longer in their company than you had to!”
Her friends had all nodded in agreement, but Olivia said, “Maybe it’s not their fault. Maybe it’s the way they’ve been treated and brought up. Gran said that their dad is ‘impossible’. He won’t listen to her or Jon. I don’t think the twins can be very happy. Particularly not Cosima.”
“Come on, Liv. Don’t tell me you feel sorry for them,” said Tom, who was annoyed because Cosima had usurped his seat next to Olivia during morning academic lessons and he had to sit next to Cosmo and listen to his endless moaning.
“Not exactly sorry,” said Olivia. “They’re far too spoiled and privileged for anyone to feel sorry for them but I do know what it’s like to feel as if you don’t fit in somewhere. It’s how I felt when I first came to the Swan.”
Suddenly Cosima appeared at her side and started handing out invitations. “Cosmo and I want you all to come to supper tonight at the Savoy to meet my dad,” she said.
“Sorry,” said Tom quickly, “but Georgie and I have got a Sound of Music performance tonight.”
“I can’t come either,” said Aeysha. “I promised my mum I’d help her make a cake for my little brother’s birthday, and my Auntie Hema and my cousins are coming over for a game of Monopoly.”
Olivia saw Cosi’s face and was instantly reminded of a small dog, begging. She felt bad but was relieved that she too had an excuse. “Sorry, nor me,” she said. “Eel and I have already arranged to have supper with Jack. We’ve hardly seen him since he got back. He’s been at the Imperial almost day and night getting the flying system in place. But he promised to take us out tonight. I really am sorry.”
“Never mind,” said Cosima brightly. “I’ll tell Dad that we’ll have to do it another time.”
Chapter Seven
Olivia sat in a large chair in a huge suite in the Savoy. She suddenly felt very small, like Alice after she’d followed the instructions on the bottle labelled “Drink me” in Alice in Wonderland. A waiter was opening a bottle of champagne for Jasper Wood. He saw Olivia watching.
“It’s the best they have, Octavia,” he said in his booming voice that seemed twice as large as it should be, like everything else in the room. “I always say that only the best is worth having. Six hundred pounds a pop and worth every delicious bubble.” Olivia goggled as he downed a glass in almost one mouthful. She reckoned that Jasper Wood had just swallowed the fizzy equivalent of a hundred pounds.
Since she’d arrived at the Savoy – in the limo that had been sent to collect her even though she’d said she would be fine to get the Tube – Olivia had began to appreciate just how different Cosmo and Cosima’s lives were from her own or any of the other children at the Swan.
She knew that everyone’s circumstances were different: Georgia’s mum couldn’t afford the fees for the Swan so Georgia wouldn’t be able to go if she didn’t have a scholarship, and there were lots of other children at the Swan who had bursaries, while others came from families that were comfortably off. Even Katie Wilkes-Cox, who had always been boasting about her mansion and swimming pool, had had to use the sweaty changing rooms and get around on public transport like everyone else. At the Swan you were judged not on how much money you had but on how much talent and how well you used it.
The Wood twins, however, clearly lived in a bubble of luxury and privilege. They didn’t have to do a thing for themselves. When Cosmo knocked over his orange juice, he barely seemed to notice. Olivia watched a person who looked suspiciously like an old-fashioned butler rush to mop it up and a waiter immediately handed him a new drink. Meanwhile Jasper’s personal assistant was constantly fielding calls. “I’m afraid we can’t get that shirt you want back from laundry until tomorrow,” he told Jasper apologetically.
Jasper’s face darkened. “I want it and I want it now!” he shouted. “Who do they think they’re dealing with? I’ll pay double, triple if that’s what it takes. But get it, and get it now!”
It was like watching an overgrown toddler having a tantrum. Jasper was shouting so loudly that Olivia felt completely embarrassed for him but nobody else seemed to notice. It was obviously considered normal behaviour. Cosmo continued playing on his laptop, only stopping to take a wodge of gum out of his mouth and stick it under a rosewood table, and although she glanced nervously in her dad’s direction, Cosi just carried on telling Olivia a long story about a TV movie they had made when they were very little. It had been about two children who had adventures with their dog and Jasper had been furious because the dog was paid more than the twins.
“Yeah, but that was when we were tiny, Cosi,” cut in Cosmo. “Before we were really famous. What really upset Dad was that the dog got top billing.”
“It was very cute,” said Cosi wistfully. “I’d like to have a dog, but it wouldn’t be fair on it. I’d never see it. I’m always working.”
Jasper was still shouting, “Do you know who I am?” but this time down the phone, and Olivia still felt embarrassed for him.
Olivia thought how strange it must be to live your whole life like this. The Wood family had servants to deal with their every whim but they had no real privacy either. They were constantly surrounded by assistants and minders. Over the Easter holidays Jack had taken his daughters to look round Hampton Court Palace. He’d told them that in the olden days royalty lived their entire lives in semi-public, constantly surrounded by courtiers and servants so that nobody could have an argument or even give birth without everyone hearing and seeing. Olivia thought it must have been horrible to live like that, like being on a stage where the curtain never falls. For Cosi and Cosmo, every day was like a performance with no ending.
Olivia had not expected to find herself at the Savoy that night. She’d been looking forward to spending a rare evening with her dad. Jack always left to work on the flying apparatus for Peter Pan long before Olivia and Eel were up in the mornings and wasn’t back until after they were asleep in bed. He’d told them it was only for a few weeks. Once the show opened he would have all the time in the world for them and had hinted that he had exciting summer plans for them all. But after Eel had complained that she was the only person in her class who had to make an appointment to see her own dad, and Olivia said that she’d probably spoken to him more when he had been thousands of miles away in Idaho, he had arranged to take them out to supper.
Olivia was worried because when she caught a glimpse of him hurrying out the door one morning, he looked exhausted. He was nearly in as bad a way as Alicia, who was beginning to resemble a walking ghost. Olivia was certain that her gran was still getting threatening phone calls; she’d noticed that Alicia had taken to discreetly unplugging the phone in the evenings. She wanted to talk to Jack about her gran, and check that he wasn’t wearing himself out as well.
But just an hour or so after Cosi had invited her to the Savoy, she’d got an apologetic call from Jack saying that he was desperately sorry but he would have to cancel supper tonight. Jon James had told him that the producers wanted to check up on the progress he’d made with the flying equipment, and it was definitely an order not a request, so he couldn’t get away. Standing in the corridor between classes while the Swans swirled around her on their way to various rehearsal rooms, Olivia had felt disappointment rise like a lump in her throat.
At that exact same moment Cosi had appeared. “I hear you’re free after all, Livy,” she said. “So you can come tonight.” Olivia had been so astonished she had blurted out, “Yes,” and then asked, “How on earth do you know?”
“Oh, my dad just texted me,” said Cosi casually. “Jack’s needed at the theatre. So it’s all worked out perfectly; you’ll be able to come to supper after all. It’s so neat.”
Now, sitting in the Savoy and looking at the way the Wood family operated, Olivia suddenly wondered if Cosi had deliberately manipulated the situation. Perhaps she had got her dad to order Jack to work tonight? Maybe, like Jasper, she was so used to having her own way that she’d do anything to get w
hat she wanted. The thought was so horrible it made Olivia blush just to think it, but she decided not to be too trusting of Cosi and continue to try and keep her at a distance.
Over supper, which had been ordered via room service and came on great silver salvers, Jasper Wood kept up an almost constant monologue about his children’s achievements while actually managing to ignore them completely. He had almost finished the bottle of champagne.
“It’s like this, Octavia,” he said. “The Wood family is different from other families. We’re not just a family, we’re a family business. We’re born into it. It’s our destiny. We’re theatrical royalty. We’re a brand, and as I see it Peter Pan is going to extend that brand into a different market. I keep telling the kids, we can make a lot of money out of this if we play it right. It’s a business opportunity. Everyone knows that doing theatre in London gives you real credibility. Look at people like that Harry Potter boy, or Keira Knightley. They do the West End so why shouldn’t the Woods? I want the twins to do more movies too. Keep the family name on everyone’s lips. Did you know they’ve already got half a million friends on Facebook? That’s the way forward, and I’ve got big plans for them. Peter Pan is only the start, Octavia.”
“Olivia,” said Cosi, embarrassed. “Her name’s Olivia.”
“Olivia, Octavia, who cares?” boomed Jasper. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” said Olivia quietly. As soon as she said it, she regretted it. She felt Cosi freeze beside her. For a moment, Jasper looked as if he was about to explode, but what he eventually did was even worse. He gave a sarcastic little laugh.
“It may matter to you, but it doesn’t matter to anyone else. You’re not a name, you’re just little Olivia Nobody.” The table had suddenly gone very quiet. The waiters stood as if they had been turned to stone. Even Cosmo looked troubled, and Cosi began to sob. Olivia stood up. Her legs were shaking but she was determined not to give Jasper Wood the satisfaction of seeing how much he had hurt her.