‘Ethan, I’m not rocking up to my audition in a chauffeured car.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m not,’ Merida stated, and pulled on a kilt made up of shades of summer. ‘We’ll walk.’
She looked, Ethan thought, completely stunning. Her hair, along with the bright colours of the kilt, was a delicious burst of colour on a busy morning.
They chatted as they walked quickly, headed for Hell’s Kitchen, where Merida had a tiny place above a loud Italian café.
‘Do you have lines to rehearse?’
‘No.’ Merida smiled.
‘Have you been to many auditions since you’ve got here?’
‘I only recently got my Equity card, but I’ve been for more auditions than I can count.’
They arrived at the Italian café, which this morning was relatively quiet.
‘This is me,’ Merida said, and gave Maria, the owner, a wave through the window.
Ethan had fully intended to wait outside, though he couldn’t help but be curious, so he walked with her up the dingy stairs.
It was a studio apartment. There was a bed, a small kitchenette, and he guessed behind a beige door must be the bathroom. There was not much else.
She hauled out her suitcase from under the bed and sorted out the papers she might need. ‘Do you think I need to take my passport?’
‘I’ve never been for an audition,’ Ethan replied. ‘You’re really nervous, aren’t you?’
‘I really am,’ Merida agreed. ‘I’d better tart up.’
‘Tart up?’
She nodded, but didn’t elaborate.
‘I’ll wait outside for you,’ Ethan said. ‘Give you some space.’
She was running late, so she headed to the bathroom and quickly got to work. There, she added loads of eyeliner and mascara, and wished that she hadn’t washed her hair, because the bedhead look would have been much better.
She kicked off her boots and put on a sheer pair of tights. Then poked a finger through the knee.
And she was going to have to get Gemma a box of chocolates, or something, because the black stilettoes were being worn again.
A shabby bra was easy—Merida could have worn any of the ones she had in her drawer. And then she put a skimpy black top on.
There was no full-length mirror in her apartment, so Merida just had to hope she looked low-rate hookerish enough.
She clattered down the stairs in her heels, her mind too full of her audition and the waiting Ethan to remember that she had meant to come home to take her Pill. Instead, she was wondering why Ethan had chosen to wait outside. Perhaps the chaos of her tiny apartment was too much, Merida thought. It certainly wouldn’t be anything like he was used to.
But Ethan hadn’t left for that reason. Once outside, he had pulled out his phone. It was nine-thirty, and usually by now he’d have achieved close to two hours of work.
He’d called Abe. ‘Any news?’
‘Why aren’t you in the office?’
‘I’m taking the day off.’
‘Well, I just called the hospital and he’s still in theatre.’
‘He was first on the list?’ Ethan checked.
‘He’s the only one on Jacobs’s list,’ Abe corrected. Jobe Devereux would have the top surgeon’s full attention for as long as was needed. ‘Apparently he went down at eight.’
‘Keep me posted,’ Ethan said.
‘Sure.’
There was no small talk.
They didn’t do that.
Ethan didn’t voice the maths that was going on in his head. If he’d gone down at eight, there would have been, say, half an hour till he went under. And that was being generous. Exploratory surgery? Well, there Ethan’s expertise died, because he didn’t have a clue.
Ethan just wanted the call to come saying that everything was okay so he could shake the black feeling that had clung to him like a murky shadow since... Well, since a couple of months ago, when he’d first seen his father wince with a pain he’d quickly denied.
And that jibe about him refusing to follow the professor’s orders and only partake in a light supper? That had been for both their benefits—a stab at a pretence that things were normal.
But in truth, apart from soup in restaurants, Ethan hadn’t seen his father eat in weeks.
He wasn’t ready to lose him.
Oh, they weren’t close by most standards, but Ethan had always hoped there would be time to work on all that.
He stared unseeing as a laundry truck pulled up and the world went about its day.
Please, let him be okay.
‘Ready?’
He turned to the sound of her voice, though for a second he didn’t realise it was Merida.
He looked down and saw torn stockings and high heels, and then she gave him a quick flash of her outfit beneath her trench coat: a black tube top and her kilt, rolled over at the waist to shorten it some more. She really looked the part.
‘If we get photographed together, I’m going to outdo my own reputation!’
Ethan imagined Maurice’s face if he was photographed walking through midtown, holding hands with a hooker. Which made him do something he rarely did, and certainly not something he’d thought he’d do today—he laughed.
The shadow lifted—just as it had last night.
‘Where to?’ he asked.
‘Fifty-Fourth,’ Merida said, and turned in completely the wrong direction.
He hauled her back. ‘It’s this way.’
They found the building where the auditions were being held on the tenth floor, and as they stood outside he saw how pale her face was.
‘Am I allowed to say good luck?’ Ethan checked, because he knew actors were a suspicious lot.
‘No.’ Merida shook her head. ‘You’re supposed to say, Break a leg.’
‘Very well.’ He gave her a smile. ‘Break a leg—though please don’t. I’ll meet you...’ He looked across the street to a coffee shop. ‘Over there.’
He watched her go in, a dart of colour disappearing into the crowded foyer, filled with many, well...pretend hookers. All, Ethan guessed, after the same part.
It was actually nice to have a morning off.
He read the news on his phone and waited for his brother to call.
Abe didn’t call.
So he gave up reading and instead watched the door across the street, wondering what the hell was going on, because there seemed to be a load of construction workers filling the foyer now.
Perhaps the elevators were out, Ethan thought, and picked up his phone again.
There was still no word from Abe, so he called him. It went straight to voicemail.
There were more men in high-vis jackets and hard hats heading towards the building. Ethan had worked on enough high-rise building designs to be concerned. Was he sitting idly watching as some emergency unfolded while Merida was in there?
He stood and left the café, dodging the traffic as he crossed the busy street and entered the building.
There were workers everywhere—some standing chatting, others sitting reading their phones or newspapers. He was about to ask what the hell was going on when the elevator doors opened and Merida walked out.
Ethan let out a breath of relief and acknowledged to himself his concern.
‘Hey!’ He gave a rather grim response to the brightness of her presence and the cloud didn’t lift entirely. There was a knot of unease still there. ‘How did it go?’
‘“We’ll call you”,’ Merida said, and rolled her eyes as she walked out with him. ‘I’d kill for a coffee.’
‘Sure.’
His table was still free, his half-drunk bottle of water still there, so he ordered another, and a coffee for Merida.
‘Is everything okay?’ she checked.
‘Sure.’
She wasn’t secure enough in herself, let alone them, to notice his distraction and not assume he was bored, or had got fed up waiting. Or just fed up with her.
She’d grown up with that—bewildered by the bitter custody disputes and two separate parents who would fight to the last penny and breath for their time with her. Yet all too often, when that time came, Merida had felt like an inconvenience.
‘I was just watching the foyer fill with construction workers,’ Ethan explained. ‘I thought you might have got stuck in the lift...’
‘No!’ Merida laughed. ‘After the hooker auditions they’re casting for a middle-aged construction worker...’
Ethan laughed at his own mistake, and at the small glimpse into her world, and then his phone went and he saw that it was Abe calling.
‘I need to take this.’
‘Sure.’
Only she didn’t quite understand why taking a call meant he had to walk off.
Work, Merida told herself.
Only it wasn’t.
‘He’s back from theatre,’ Abe said by way of greeting.
‘And?’
‘He’s talking,’
‘And?’ Ethan said, because although Abe wasn’t one for idle words, there was nothing reassuring in his tone.
‘You need to come to the hospital,’ Abe said. ‘Prof Jacobs is going to speak with us there. That’s all I know.’
‘Who have you spoken to?’
‘Just get to the hospital as soon as you can, Ethan. I’ll meet you there.’
He looked over to where Merida sat in the mid-morning sun, pouring sugar into her coffee, and Ethan knew for sure that everything was about to change.
Everything.
The circus that was his life was about to go full throttle, and he would not be exposing her to that. And neither did he need another witness to his grief.
Grief.
Ethan knew the news wasn’t good for his father.
He’d known for a couple of months.
And now he had to face it.
He walked back to Merida. He didn’t sit down—just stood over her and tried to work out what to say and decided that less was best.
His father’s surgery was a closely guarded secret. The Devereux family did not discuss such things with outsiders.
And so he reverted to type.
Arrogant, aloof, closed-off type.
‘Something’s come up.’
She blinked and looked up at the sound of his voice. Ethan stood with the sun behind him, his face unreadable. Rather than fretting over her performance at the audition Merida had been sitting daydreaming—or rather last-night-dreaming—when his deep voice had hauled her back to Ethan in real time.
He was back to being the man she’d first met—detached and a touch dismissive and very keen to be gone.
‘Something?’ Merida checked.
‘Yes. I need to head off.’
‘Now?’ Merida tried to keep the shake from her voice.
‘Yes, now.’
And then she actually had to close her lips together to resist asking, When will I see you? When will you call?
‘Be good,’ he said.
When she stood up he went to leave, but then instead he turned back and did the oddest thing. He did up the buttons of her trench coat. The inside ones and the outer. And then he did up her belt.
‘It’s cold,’ Ethan said.
Then, without looking back, he walked away.
And left her standing there.
* * *
‘Does he know?’
Abe was the one asking the questions.
Ethan stood with his back to where the two other men them sat and stared out at the view.
He recognised the picture on the wall.
This was the same room they’d been taken to when they’d waited to see their mother all those years ago. Oh, no doubt the furnishings had changed, but that picture remained.
A night shot of Brooklyn Bridge, from Brooklyn, looking over to Manhattan.
To Ethan, it was the best view in the world—but he could not stand to look at it now. Instead he listened as the professor explained that Jobe had known for some time.
‘So this wasn’t exploratory surgery?’ Abe checked.
‘It was. I wanted to view the tumour myself and take some biopsies.’
‘He’s had scans?’ Ethan asked, without looking round.
‘Many of them,’ the professor answered.
He loathed it that his father gone through all that alone, but Ethan knew why—his father would hate showing weakness or fear.
Now Ethan turned around. ‘How long does he have?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ Professor Jacobs answered. ‘I’ll know more when I get back the pathology.’
‘We’re not going to hold you to a date.’ Ethan had a voice that could both be polite and hold warning. He wanted his question answered.
‘With treatment to shrink the tumour,’ the professor said, ‘I’d say six months. But this is Jobe we’re talking about, so I’m hopeful for maybe a year.’
Ethan did not let that sink in.
He couldn’t.
And so he asked another question.
‘Can we see him?’
‘Sure.’
Ethan had expected a pale shadow of a man in the bed, but the stubborn mule was sitting up—albeit resting on pillows.
‘You should have told us,’ Ethan said.
‘Don’t start,’ Jobe dismissed. ‘It’s to be business as normal.’
‘How can it be?’ Abe pointed out. ‘You need to rest and...’
‘I’ll orchestrate my own demise, thank you. I don’t want a sniff of this getting out.’
‘The board has to know.’
‘Not yet, they don’t.’
A new voice spoke and Ethan turned as Maurice came in.
‘Your father wants the move into Dubai announced first.’
And that was that.
On the morning he found out his father was dying, even then in the Devereux world business came first.
And so, on Ethan’s first day off in living memory, he was back in the office by lunchtime.
‘How’s Jobe?’ Helene asked, her eyes wide with concern.
‘Good,’ Ethan quipped, and then glibly lied. ‘Gallstones or something. But that’s just between us.’
‘Of course.’
The show would go on.
* * *
For Merida, the show went on too.
Literally.
She performed at weekends and continued her work at the gallery.
But it was cold without him.
Oh, spring had burst into life, and the days grew longer and brighter, yet she shivered inside at his sudden departure from her life.
Well, not so sudden by his standards, Merida thought sadly. She couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned.
And even when she received a call-back to say she had made it onto the TV show, her elation was tempered by the bleak space in her heart that he had left behind.
Even her best friend, Naomi, back home in England, noticed it.
‘You don’t sound as thrilled as I thought you would,’ Naomi said when Merida called her with the news about the television part.
‘Of course I am,’ Merida said, and pushed her voice into an upbeat tone. ‘Filming is Wednesday night...’
‘Night?’
‘I walk across the bridge, and then they find my body in Central Park at night,’ Merida said. Naomi laughed. ‘And then I have two days in the studio the following week.’
‘Have you told your boss at the gallery?’
‘He wasn’t thrilled that I’m taking more time off.’ Merida sighed.
‘I think I’m going to have to give in my notice. He wants me to do another private tour on Saturday night when he knows I’ve got Near Miss.’
‘You need the regular work, though.’
‘I know I do, but it was always supposed to be a fall-back for my acting—not the other way around.’
‘Well, think long and hard before you give it away.’
‘I shall.’
‘Merida?’ Naomi checked. ‘Are you sure that everything’s okay?’
‘Of course it is,’ Merida attempted, but then her voice cracked.
‘Merida...?’
‘I met someone.’
And she told her the whole sorry story.
Well, not the whole story. She didn’t reveal his name, and she left Naomi to work out the intimate details, it was enough for her to say it had been wonderful. She told her friend about the next morning, how they had got on so well. And that while in hindsight, yes, it had clearly been a one-night stand...
‘It felt like a lot more at the time,’ Merida admitted. ‘I thought he felt the same.’
‘Merida,’ Naomi said gently. ‘How long has it been since you saw him?’
‘Two weeks—but he doesn’t know my cell-phone number...’
‘He clearly knows where you work,’ Naomi pointed out. ‘And, given that you went back to your apartment to get changed, he also knows where you live.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he hasn’t made any effort to get in touch?’
‘No.’
That said it all, really.
* * *
Merida had done all she could to put it behind her. To chalk it up to inexperience as she swore never to be so foolish again.
And now she stood on the bridge, under lights to mimic the moon in a dark Central Park as the clapperboard snapped. The hotel where she and Ethan had spent that magical night was there in the background, but it was easy to put her head down and ignore it as she walked hurriedly on. It hurt too much to think about that night.
It was an agony that did not abate.
On her second Saturday without him Merida checked that her wig was secure and then dragged in air.
‘Five minutes to curtain,’ the stage manager called.
‘Thanks,’ Merida called back, glad that the performance was due to start.
Grateful for the escape.
That was what acting gave her.
The Innocent's Shock Pregnancy Page 6