‘He look very surprised,’ Fatima says.
Which sets me off again. God it’s good to laugh, even in such heinous circumstances. For a while tonight, I wondered if I’d ever laugh again.
The What an Ado About Zombies! publicity campaign proves so successful that, come four o’clock on the Friday of the dress rehearsal, there is a queue up the Gaslight steps full of college kids celebrating the start of half-term, looking forward to the Gaslight’s zeitgeist brand of zombie craic and hoping to sneak a preview of the show. Several are wearing masks, fangs and flashing horns.
Oz has been quick to capitalize.
‘We’re using raffle tickets,’ he says, waving a fat book of blue ticket stubs as Tabby, Fatima and I mount the crowded steps for Tab’s make-up call. ‘A fiver for a sneak preview. Give the crowd what they want, I say. Checks out with the boss.’
He thumbs at the auditorium doors, where two hideous creatures in shredded security-guard uniforms are talking to an enthusiastic gaggle of early comers. I look more closely. The creatures are Patricia and Eunice, dressed as zombie Night Watchmen Dogberry and Verges. Patricia’s double-breasted jacket magnifies the size of her stomach to epic proportions, and she adjusts her hat as we approach.
‘We’ve got an audience already, isn’t that tremendous?’ she says with a ghastly, bloody grin. ‘We’ll be stopping and starting like old motorbikes as we and the band get used to each other, but no one seems to care. Ella’s just doing Gladys, as it were. You’re next on her list, Tabitha. I’m sorry, my darling,’ she adds to a girl in devil deelyboppers sidling up to the auditorium doors, ‘but no one’s going in until seven-fifteen. And if anyone tries, I’ll pull their throats out the way they taught me in zombie school.’
‘The band’s doing a warm-up in the auditorium,’ Eunice tells us as we hear the strain of familiar tunes wafting through the doors. She looks ludicrously chic in her uniform and face paint. ‘Go and have a listen. It’s super.’
Fatima wanders off to the bar to see if she can blag an extra hour’s work, trailing a few groupies behind her. Tab shoves me through the doors of the auditorium, talking at a hundred miles an hour.
‘It was such a good night last night, Lilah, seriously, I totally wish you’d been there, Maria was a total cow to Sam, I think even Sam was quite shocked at the way she was acting, and he was incredibly sweet to me and bought me a Coke and we even managed to laugh about the summer music thing we did when we first, you know, and it was fine, it was actually OK . . .’
Go and have the sex, little lambs. I hear Fatima in my head, loud and clear.
‘Jem has a girlfriend,’ I say. ‘A tall one.’
The sound of a violin from the Slaughterhouse Seven soars about the auditorium roof with perfect timing.
‘No,’ Tabby says, aghast.
‘Fatima saw her in the kitchen on Wednesday night,’ I say sadly. ‘He’s supposed to realize I did this to give him his first proper gig, and then he’s supposed to apologize for being an arse, and THEN he’s supposed to kiss me to death in blind gratitude and love. But I’ve done it for nothing.’
‘Hardly that, babes,’ Tab protests. ‘Every single member of the cast owes you big time. Don’t you realize?’ She waves at the set, the green lighting scheme, the band percussionists in vampire masks. ‘What you’ve done is immense. Musical theatre history. You are a proper legend, Delilah. Not a Greek one this time; a real one. A modern one.’
I feel quite teary at the warmth in her voice. ‘But you aren’t with Sam,’ I say miserably. ‘I’m not with Jem. Nothing’s worked out like it’s supposed to.’
‘It’s gone way beyond that, Delilah,’ Tab tells me.
She pushes me past the Slaughterhouse Seven in their pit and through a rubber-sealed door marked ‘backstage’.
A sudden wall of chatter, laughter and music smashes into me.
The cast of What an Ado About Zombies! is getting ready for the dress rehearsal. We pass clothes rails of costumes, some of which I recognize for certain painful reasons. A skull-patterned rucksack spilling hairspray (Gladys, I suspect), old lady support shoes (Gladys again), Mr Metal loudly singing ‘Love Eternal’ as he applies a disfiguring latex scar to Sam’s cheek, an abandoned iPod beside a library book on wild flowers on a greasy make-up counter. I do a double-take at Warren, halfway through his make-over. With his green-blue zombie face on, he looks almost fanciable.
‘You’ve thrown me in a room with people born in the second world war,’ says Tab, raising her voice above the riot. ‘Looking hot, Gladys.’
Gladys waves from beneath Ella’s paintbrush.
‘You have made a death-metalhead embrace musical theatre,’ Tab goes on as Mr Metal sings a bit louder on the ‘Love Eternal’ chorus. ‘You have allowed a Monster Munch love story to unfold.’
‘Pickled onion flavour,’ says Henry, halfway into his outfit, and Rich smiles fondly.
‘You’ve introduced me to a scary girl who isn’t scary any more.’
‘I’m still scary,’ says Ella, offended. She looks wired and super-jumpy. ‘You’re done, Glad. Get your backside in my chair, Tabitha, or you’ll go from Hero to zero in less time than it takes me to blink.’
‘And that doesn’t even touch on how I will shortly be singing a lead role in a proper theatre covered in peeling flesh before the professional gaze and extensive note-taking of agency scouts, thanks entirely to you,’ Tab says, settling obediently into the seat Gladys has vacated. She sweeps her hands around the room, bringing my attention to every single thing and person in the chaotic but purposeful space. ‘Other things maybe didn’t work out like we thought. But tell me again that it’s all been for nothing.’
In a back corner of the room, Jem is finishing off the masterpiece that is Dorcas’s fleshless, putrid jaw bone. His black hair hangs in his eyes and he has a smear of green paint on one cheek. He hasn’t seen me come in. Or maybe he has, and is choosing to ignore me. I feel insanely jealous of Dorcas.
‘Don’t lose faith,’ Tab says, catching my hopeless glance in his direction. ‘You said that to me once, about Sam. Your words have got me this far. Try applying them to yourself.’
‘And remember what they say in undead musical theatre,’ Ella adds, wiping her brushes with trembling fingers. ‘It’s not over till the zombie lady’s head drops off. I badly need a smoke.’
I realize what’s missing back here: the heavy haze of hash. No wonder Ella is stressed.
‘How are we getting on, darlings?’ says Patricia, striding into the room. ‘Some big bouncer chap just turned up. Friend of Oz, summoned on red alert. I’ve put him on the auditorium doors. If I were twenty years younger . . .’
‘He’d be a foetus,’ says Eunice.
‘I wish I knew more about this girlfriend Jem’s got,’ I mutter as the rest of the room bellows with amusement. ‘You know, whether she’d been around for ages or just . . . since me.’
‘Jem hasn’t got a girlfriend,’ says Ella, applying bluish paint to Tabby’s face in swift, sure strokes.
‘Apparently he has,’ Tab says. ‘And she’s tall. Fatima saw him with her.’
Ella looks slyly amused. Her eyes flicker up and down my petite frame. ‘Got bored of doing it on a stepladder,
did he?’
‘Ella!’ Tab protests.
‘I’m just saying!’ Ella grins. ‘Stop moving. You’re going to look like something from the meat counter in Sainsbury’s, and not in a good way.’
Maybe Jem has taken the tall girl to our wardrobe. Perfect spot, perfect privacy. Comfy furs.
‘Break a leg or whatever,’ I say, getting up abruptly.
‘Delilah—’
‘Tabitha, I said stay flipping still!’ Ella hisses.
I climb over Gladys’s rucksack and through the rail of costumes that smell of memories, barge out o
f the stage door and back through the auditorium. The gentle waltzing sounds of the band working through ‘Love Eternal’ make me walk faster. Mum is on the stage, singing and dancing and waving two fingers at me. I have to get out of here before I break down like an old car on the sticky carpet.
‘Everything all right, Delilah?’
I hold up one hand wordlessly at Kev on the auditorium doors and keep walking through the lobby, through the glass doors and down the big steps outside. The cheerfully dressed queue has grown, and is almost winding back to the High Street itself. I want to tell them all that life is a goatskin of steaming camel urine and the sooner they take off their devil horns the happier everyone will be.
This is all Aphrodite’s fault.
‘You will come,’ Fatima insists.
‘Tabby will understand,’ I say stubbornly.
Fatima glares through fantastic Hallowe’en eyes, spider-web falsies shimmering on her eyelids. ‘Lâche.’
‘So I’m a coward,’ I say, lifting my chin. ‘I’ll apply for membership to the Coward Society, get a little yellowbelly badge, bury my head in sand, whatever. I’m not coming. You go. Val’ll want you there as early as possible tonight.’
Fatima doesn’t move.
‘Just go, will you?’ I say weakly.
My phone rings. Tab. I don’t answer, hating myself for it.
‘If you don’t come,’ Fatima declares, ‘I will tell to Jem that you love him and so you don’t come because of this.’
I gape in horror. ‘You wouldn’t.’
She jabs at me with a fearsome blood-red fingernail. ‘I will tell to him everything. The show. The so-sad tears.’
‘Fatima, you—’
‘You English,’ she says impatiently. ‘Why must I explain everything? How glad I am that I am French. You must put on your nice clothes and your pretty eyes and you must show him you are not scared. Love is the war. If you don’t fight, you will lose.’
She is getting dangerously loud. Dad will start taking an interest in a minute.
‘I’ve lost already,’ I whisper. ‘I—’
‘I will put on Facebook,’ Fatima threatens. ‘Then everyone will know. The tall girlfriend will know.’
She whips out her phone and starts typing. I fly across the room at her, knocking the phone from her hand.
‘You win, you total cow! I’ll come for the show. But that is IT. I am leaving before the party. Is that clear?’
‘Bon. Now dress.’
She goes through my wardrobe like a whirlwind. Dresses discarded, shoes ignored, scarves thrown across the bed.
‘That?’ I say, cautiously looking at the black lace thing she is thrusting at me. ‘It’s a vest.’
‘It is super-sexy minidress.’
‘I’ll freeze my butt off!’
She shakes it at me, firmly. I put on the vest, adjusting it around an old black bra she located at the back of my sock drawer. I am relieved when she hands me black leggings next. For a nasty moment I thought she was going to send me to my doom half-naked.
‘Hair.’
‘Straight?’ I say hopefully.
‘Boring as a boring English person. Curls, chérie. They are your most sexy thing.’
She tugs my hair out of its scrunchy, making me yelp.
‘So pretty,’ she says with satisfaction as it cascades around my face. ‘Big earrings, red lipstick, boum. You are a little goddess.’
A goddess is the last thing I want to be. Fatima opens her make-up bag and shoves me into the bathroom.
Fifteen minutes later and more frightened than ever, I insist on putting my trusty parka over the top of the strange, lace-clad, sooty-eyed, red-lipped creation that is post-makeover me. Fatima is appalled.
‘It’s November tomorrow,’ I hiss as she tries to pull the parka from my shoulders for the third time in as many minutes. ‘And I’m not wearing heels.’
I am close to running back to my room and locking the door behind me. Wisely, Fatima allows my Vans and parka to stand.
We walk, at my insistence. Fatima tries to urge me forward at more than a snail’s pace. ‘You think he will not be there if we are late?’ she goads. ‘He will be there. The person that you don’t want to be there will be there, with this tall girl. They will be kissing. Picture this worst thing and prepare for the war.’
I picture the tall girlfriend dead. It’s bad of me, but I do. It’s surprisingly easy. My emotions feel like a ticking bomb, packed with venom for a girl I’ve never even met. The anger and upset I felt over Dave are nothing compared to this.
As if I have conjured him through the sheer power of thought, Dave walks around the corner, holding hands with a sulky-looking Louise. He leers excitedly at Fatima, then realizes she’s with me. Guilt and caution are suddenly all over his face.
I am in no mood for small talk. ‘I hardly recognize you on foot, Dave.’
‘Where have you been, Dee?’ he says, recovering. ‘I’ve been calling you for days.’
Louise is holding tightly on to his fingers, preventing him from slipping his moorings. The news that he’s been calling me isn’t going down well.
‘I got rid of my phone,’ I say. ‘Thought I’d got rid of you too.’
The urgent eyebrows Dave aims at me give him the look of a startled stoat. ‘What happened to . . .’
‘It got broken,’ I say.
He deflates before my eyes, a sad individual in a naff leather coat.
Louise fixes Dave with a basilisk stare. ‘What’s she talking about? Why were you calling her?’
Propelled by the strange surge of empowerment Fatima has triggered, I address Louise. ‘Does Dave still have his testicles?’
Looking surprised, Louise nods.
‘Why do you still have your testicles, Dave?’ I ask.
‘I sold my car,’ he mumbles.
‘You sold your car,’ I repeat.
‘I sold my car.’
‘You sold your car?’
Louise interrupts irritably. ‘He sold his car, OK? God knows why I agreed to go out with him again.’ She bends down and rubs at the back of her shoe. She is wearing extremely high heels.
Fatima says something long and venomous-sounding in French.
‘What?’ says Dave.
‘Trust me,’ I say, struggling to contain the volcano. You ruined everything for me when you could have just sold your car. ‘You don’t want to know.’
I leave him with Louise moaning on the pavement about her shoes. I’m so furious, I can feel myself turning green and expanding with every step I take.
‘Dave le bâtard,’ Fatima states, keeping pace with me. ‘Yes?’
I tell Fatima everything in a tumble of fury. The ATM robberies, my lost money, my found money. Dave and the swipe machine. Dave and his flaming car. I don’t know how much she follows. When I’m angry, I talk even faster than I walk.
‘His contacts are probably the same guys who ripped off the ATMs. Who else would he get a fake swipe machine from? Jem goes ape at me while Dave simply sells his car, pays what he owes and gets his girlfriend back!’
Judging from Louise’s face tonight, Dave won’t last long without his car. The thought gives me a degree of savage satisfaction.
‘How do you get your money back?’ Fatima asks, doing her best to keep up.
‘The bank refunded me. I think Jem knew about the scam somehow, he kept telling me to talk to the bank. He’s got dodgy friends, he must’ve asked arou—’
Click, whirr. A sudden bright ray of understanding.
Fatima clicks her fingers under my nose. ‘’Allo? You nearly walk into the lamp post.’
I am like Buddha but skinnier with more hair, and infinitely more stupid. I know it all.
‘Studs was
part of the fraud,’ I say in wonder. ‘The skinny weasel I nearly bumped into at Ella’s flat. You must have seen him. Diamonds in his nose. Studs!’ My brain is at fever pitch. ‘Jem would never give Studs up to the police because they are friends from way back. But Jem guessed Studs was involved when I mentioned my bank problem . . . He went to find him – talk to him – fight – black eye . . .’
I got this for you.
I clutch my head. Comprehension hurts when it comes at you as fast as this. ‘Jem’s the one that gave Studs the split lip,’ I whisper.
‘He must love you very much to do this,’ says Fatima.
The strength of my shame, my longing and my total idiocy nearly knock me off my feet. ‘I guess he did, once,’
I whisper. ‘But now he’s got a better deal with Miss Burj Khalifa.’
Half a moon peeps out from behind a frost-edged cloud overhead. Aphrodite, listening in.
‘This is all a very big mess,’ Fatima says after a long silence. ‘But you must still fight, chérie. If he love you once, he can maybe love you again.’
I shake my head. All the fight has gone out of me. I am a sad, punctured balloon flapping in the wind. There is no way back. ‘What did you say to Dave back there, by the way?’ I ask, rubbing my nose and blinking back the tears that are about to turn my mascara into several shades of hell.
‘I say he is like the corpse of a dog in my mouth with the maggots inside.’
‘Story of my life,’ I mutter.
It is nearly six o’clock as we force our way up the crowded steps, through the double doors and into the throbbing pumpkin-decorated lobby. For an instant, half an instant even, I think I see Studs slipping through the depths like a piranha. This many punters in one place spells showtime in more ways than one.
‘Fatima!’ Val roars over the mass of heads already crowding the bar. ‘You’re LATE!’
‘You will be OK?’ Fatima asks me. She looks genuinely worried.
I know without checking in a mirror that I look more undead than all the zombies, ghosts, vampires and slasher-murderers pushing and shoving around me put together. But then she is swept into the crowd and is gone.
The Kiss Page 20