The Kiss

by Lucy Courtenay

  I fight my way through to the auditorium doors. Kev looks spectacular, a great gaunt skeleton in a headset. ‘Looking hot tonight, Delilah the vixen,’ he grins and lets me through.

  The velvet thump of the doors behind me cuts off the chaos. Members of the theatre’s lighting crew are scaling the rigs at the back of the stage, adjusting spotlights and attaching filters. Someone has their head inside the piano, filling the air with the monotonous bom-bom-bom of strings being hit and tightened and hit again, while a broken piece of scenery is nailed together and cables firmly gaffer-taped to the floor. The air is thick with expectancy. You can almost open your mouth and take a bite.

  Beep.

  PLZ PLZ CALL I NEED YOU

  xxxx

  ‘Delilah!’ Appearing at the stage door, Rich looks anxious and dishevelled. ‘Thank God. Tabitha’s going nuts trying to reach you. Apparently you haven’t been answering your phone. Can you go and see her, talk to her?’

  On top of the emotional exhaustion, I suddenly feel scared. ‘What’s happened?’

  Backstage, Mr Metal is staring at his empty make-up chair, mindlessly twirling the metal in his nose. Somewhere in the background, in the toilets maybe, someone is screaming with fury. Despite the apparent focus, the swish of brushes from the make-up team, it is clear that the whole room is trying to hear what’s going on.

  A half-painted Tab almost knocks me down, ignoring the multi-coloured swearing from Ella with her brush held in mid-air.

  ‘You came,’ she sobs. ‘I thought you weren’t going to come, I’ve been messaging you and calling you—’

  ‘I wouldn’t miss your big night, would I?’ I lie, feeling bewildered by the drama that has descended from nowhere. I have almost forgotten what it feels like to have Tab needing me like this. ‘Of course I came. What’s up?’

  She shoves her phone at me with trembling fingers.

  Leave my boyfriend alone bitch

  ‘Charming,’ I say, extremely relieved that it isn’t anything more serious than a fresh Sam situation. ‘Maria?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Tab wails. ‘He sent the text to me.’

  ‘If you don’t sit down, I am going to redefine ape.’ Ella looks mad-eyed with nerves. ‘I’ll walk out of that door and you will get on that stage looking like a camel’s rectum.’

  I steer Tab back into Ella’s make-up chair and pat Ella on the arm.

  ‘And I will bite the next person who tries to calm me down,’ Ella snarls, fixing my patting hand with the stony glare of Medusa. Her pupils are like pinheads.

  ‘I got a text,’ Tabby sniffs. ‘From Sam. He wants me back.’

  It is remarkable to discover that I can feel like death yet also winded with delight at the same time. ‘Wow!’ I gasp. ‘Just like that? Can I see the text?’

  I’ve messed up. I love you.

  Go figure.

  S x

  Short, sweet, despondent. Totally what is needed. I am seized with a passionate longing for the message to be for me, from Jem.

  ‘But that’s fantastic!’ I say, pressing the phone back into her hands.

  Tab shakes her head. ‘Maria saw the text on his phone and went ballistic. Sam hadn’t said anything to her about breaking up. Not a word. We’re on stage in just over an hour, Lilah. About to tell a love story that, right now, isn’t going to happen.’

  ‘Of course it’s going to happen!’ I say, aghast. The show can’t go belly-up now. Not now. Not after everything I

  have done.

  ‘Beatrice is meant to be in love with Benedick,’ Tabby wails. ‘But now all she wants to do is kill him. She’s insane with rage and refusing to get her face done and threatening not to do the show at all. This is all my fault!’

  I try to keep a grip. ‘It’s all Sam’s fault, surely?’

  ‘Lilah, you don’t—’

  ‘STOP TALKING,’ Ella howls.

  ‘Everyone needs to calm down,’ says Patricia. Beneath her demonic make-up, she is grey with anxiety. ‘Maria wouldn’t be so unprofessional as to let us down now. There will be agents out there, and press, and—’

  Maria’s shrieking pierces the toilet walls. ‘YOU SPINELESS SKUNK! YOU FAT COKE-DRINKING FLATFISH!’

  ‘She’s a charmer, that Maria, isn’t she?’ says Jem.

  I have been so absorbed in Tabby’s drama that I have totally failed to clock Jem making up Dorcas two chairs further down the room. It is a miracle that I don’t wet myself then and there. He is looking right at me.

  Sam crashes out of the toilets, breathing hard. A bog roll comes flying out and clonks him in the back of the head.

  ‘BASTARD!’ Maria screeches from the toilets.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ Sam says. ‘Sorry, Patricia. Sorry everyone.’ The look he gives Tabby is one of hopeless longing. ‘Sorry Tab.’

  He hurries out of the fire escape at the back of the room. Ella leans her hand hard on Tabitha’s shoulder to stop her leaping out of her chair and running after him, muttering warnings of death by hideous means.

  ‘Oh dear,’ says Eunice helplessly. ‘No leading man now either.’

  ‘Come on,’ Jem says to me as a shrill, desperate chatter breaks out.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I say in surprise.

  ‘I’ve finished Dorcas. I don’t have anything to do. You don’t have anything to do. Everyone else is busy, terrified or both. We have about an hour until curtain-up. We’re going to talk to Sam.’

  He holds out his hand to me. I stare at it in disbelief.

  ‘You will bring him back, won’t you?’ Tab implores.

  ‘Do our best,’ I mumble, sliding my hand into Jem’s. My whole body is boiling hot from the pressure of his fingers. ‘Can’t promise anything. Someone else will have to get Maria to put her toys back in the pram.’

  Jem threads me through the room and out of the same fire escape Sam has just used. A relieved wave of applause follows us out, cut off abruptly by the slamming of the fire door. The cold air wallops into me.

  ‘Should have grabbed my jacket,’ Jem says, shivering. ‘Can’t really go back in now, can I? Not cool.’

  ‘Like leaving a party,’ I blurt, for want of anything better to say. ‘When you say goodbye to everyone really loudly and shut the front door and then realize your phone is upstairs.’

  ‘In the bog,’ Jem says.

  ‘In the bog,’ I agree. His tall girlfriend wouldn’t approve of this hand-holding, I think.

  Sam is standing by the rushing river, his big back in silhouette under the dirty brown lights. He turns slightly as we approach.

  ‘You probably think I’m the biggest idiot in town,’ he says.

  ‘I can think of a bigger one,’ I say, with complete honesty. ‘Your timing’s a bit off, though. Couldn’t you

  have held it in until after the show?’

  His eyes are pained. ‘I’ve been thinking about it for ages. Since . . . well, basically on and off since I ended it. It’s just . . . my pride took a kicking at that party. And then there was Maria. I was still holding a candle for Tab at the start of our relationship, but suddenly Maria was right under my skin.’ He looks puzzled. ‘She was incredibly sexy, somehow. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ I say.

  Jem has finally let go of my hand.

  ‘I was in a mess,’ Sam groans. ‘Did I like Maria, or Tab? Tab or Maria? And today I finally realized I had it all wrong. I was thinking with my—’

  He stops apologetically.

  ‘I get the gist,’ I say.

  ‘Anyway,’ he goes on, ‘I started thinking with my heart and my head instead. The minute I did that, everything became clear. I had to act before I lost sight of what mattered all over again. And so . . .’

  ‘You sent th
e text to Tabby,’ I say.

  ‘As soon as I’d sent it, I felt like a total bastard.’ Sam looks appalled at himself. ‘I never thought I’d be the kind of guy who’d do that. And then Maria borrowed my phone without me realizing and . . . She’s right to be angry with me.’

  ‘You can’t let everyone down just because you feel bad,’ I object. ‘There’s a whole cast in there, dangling on a thread. Hundreds of ticket holders all looking like they’ve been through some kind of body shredder. The band, the set . . . Everything is ready to go. Are you really going to dump everyone in it?’

  Sam groans again. I turn the last serious screw I have in my arsenal.

  ‘This is Tabby’s big night, Sam. She’s worked really hard on this. If you really love her—’

  ‘I do,’ Sam says.

  Lucky, lucky Tab.

  ‘If you really love her,’ I repeat, ‘you’ll do the show. Because if you don’t, she’ll never forgive you. And then you won’t have anyone.’

  I have a feeling Tab would forgive Sam most things, even this – eventually. But I say it with as much conviction as I can.

  ‘Maria loathes the sight of me,’ Sam says desperately. ‘How am I supposed to make her act like she loves me?’

  ‘She’s meant to hate you, isn’t she?’

  Sam looks doubtful. ‘Yes, but she’s meant to love me too.’

  I glance discreetly at my watch. Not long to curtain-up. ‘But not to begin with, right?’ I prompt.

  ‘True,’ he concedes.

  ‘Tell her something to get her on that stage. There are agents in the audience, Patricia said. Tab says she really wants an agent.’

  Sam nods.

  ‘Tell her an agent has come specifically to see her,’ I say, struck with sudden inspiration.

  ‘But they haven’t,’ Sam says, startled.

  ‘Lie,’ I order him.

  I wait for Jem to protest but he is staring at the ground. Sam squares his shoulders and goes back inside. The fire door swings gently shut behind him.

  ‘Well you were a fat lot of use,’ I tell Jem, a little crossly.

  ‘I’d only have said the wrong thing,’ he says. ‘I’ve done a lot of that lately.’

  There is a long, weird moment, full of rushing river and freezing wind. He takes my hand again. His lips are so close and his eyes are so dark.

  The fire escape bangs open. We leap apart.

  Val is ashen. ‘There’s been an incident,’ she says. ‘An ambulance is on its way. I need your help.’

  I stare at the spattering of vomit on Val’s shirt. Picture a pair of wired Medusa eyes with pupils like pinheads. I see Studs the piranha in my mind’s eye as a ghastly dread creeps through me. Has Ella done something stupid?

  ‘One of you, either of you, both of you, I don’t care. Oz is with her now. I can’t leave the bar for much longer. Everyone else is needed for curtain-up and someone has to go to hospital with her. Move, will you?’

  I know Fatima is mad, but I never thought she’d be idiotic enough to buy whatever Studs was selling.

  The ambulance speeds through the town, sirens going. I am thrown back and forth, sometimes crashing into Jem and sometimes into the oxygen canister taped to the metal wall behind us. I look at Fatima’s dark hair spread on the ambulance pillow and the mask strapped to her face. She is taped to the gurney, her spider-web lashes closed and her chest moving erratically. Monitors bleep.

  ‘What did she take?’ I ask the paramedic fiddling with the drip feed in Fatima’s arm.

  ‘We won’t know until she wakes up and tells us.’

  This is every kind of nightmare rolled into one.

  ‘Studs was at the Gaslight,’ I spit at Jem.

  He runs his hands through his hair. ‘He wouldn’t deal anything dangerous.’

  ‘You think?’ I rest my head against the oxygen canister. ‘It must be nice to have so much faith in your friends.’

  ‘Delilah,’ he begins. ‘I—’

  I hold up my hand. ‘So not the time.’

  We listen to the keening wail of the siren over our heads. There is a little telescopic window set in the back doors of the ambulance, and I gaze out at a shrunken world of headlamps and streetlights and reflective cats’ eyes.

  Five minutes later and we are squealing into the special parking bay outside the Royal Surrey’s Accident and Emergency department. The paramedics leap out and yank Fatima on to the tarmac.

  Jem and I are allowed to follow her inside, but then we lose her. We are ordered to sit like dogs and wait. People slump in the red plastic chairs around us, with bandaged fingers, or bloody heads, or cradling wailing children. The smell of disinfectant is eyewatering.

  ‘New Scientist?’ Jem suggests, dangling a tattered magazine at me.

  ‘Not really in the mood for reading,’ I say. ‘Funnily enough.’

  He puts the magazine back, reclines on the chair next to me and crosses his long legs. It is comforting having him there. I wish it wasn’t, but you take what you can get.

  ‘I worked it out about Studs and my money,’ I say. I don’t care any more. ‘And your bruise.’ I flap my fingers around my face to illustrate.

  He looks wary. ‘You worked out what, exactly?’

  ‘You fought about it. Cut Studs’ lip. I don’t know how it all connects – something to do with the cashpoint I used at the Gaslight maybe.’ Studs was there, the first time I saw Jem. The night everything began. ‘It was a lot of money that I couldn’t afford to lose, and I never said thanks. So . . . thanks.’

  ‘I didn’t put your money back,’ he says. ‘The bank did.’

  ‘It’s still what you fought about. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Studs has always worked the shallows,’ Jem says after a short pause. ‘But he met some guys recently who pushed him out too deep. He needed me to reel him in again.’

  ‘And the fishing rod gave you the bruise.’

  He gives me a look.

  ‘You started the whole fishing metaphor thing,’ I say, blushing slightly. ‘Why is it up to you to babysit him?’

  I am getting echoes of another conversation he and I once had, about a mother duck and her duckling. How times have changed.

  ‘You know why,’ he says, closing me down.

  We stare for a bit at a poster about handwashing hygiene taped to the opposite wall.

  ‘I know what you did too,’ he says eventually. ‘Saving the show, changing the theme. Ella told me. You saved my mother’s neck. The bar, the business. That makes us even, I think.’

  ‘I told Ella not to say anything,’ I say, embarrassed suddenly now my plan has been revealed in all its

  pathetic glory.

  ‘She told me on Thursday. She was bored of waiting for me to figure it out for myself.’

  Does he know I did it for him? Do I want him to know? He’s looking at me so intently that I have to stand up and walk to the desk.

  ‘Talk to me,’ I say to the receptionist on the counter. ‘I’m being bothered by the guy in the red T-shirt.’

  The receptionist has a head of tight curls and a face like a dormouse. She stares at me in wary surprise, making me wonder how often people talk to her about things not related to critical injuries. Her badge tells me to call her Shelagh, should I feel the need for first-name terms.

  ‘I was jealous, OK?’ Jem says, following me. ‘Of that idiot in the car making you laugh. It clouded my judgment. I know you were never going to rob the bar.’

  ‘Oh, but I was.’ I fiddle with the RSPCA charity box chained to the reception desk. It seems you can’t even trust people with life-threatening injuries not to nick stuff. ‘The one-way ticket to Rio was booked and everything.’

  ‘Why are you still fighting me, Delilah? Can’t we—’

&nb
sp; His phone starts ringing.

  The receptionist comes to life. ‘All phones should be switched off in the hospital,’ she barks, her tight curls vibrating even more than Jem’s phone.

  ‘I’ll take it outside.’ He fixes me with burning eyes. ‘Don’t go away. We are going to talk about this.’

  He heads through the hospital doors and stands in a streetlight with the receiver to his ear. It’s probably Val.

  Or Miss Long Legs UK.

  I don’t want to talk! I mentally scream after his back.

  More sirens, another ambulance. A kid on a trolley, lots of blood, a woman whose skin looks as clammy as a toad’s. I stand to one side with my arms tightly folded into my sides, wishing I could block out the horrible noise the woman is making as the boy is checked in. Finding a few coins in my pocket, I drop them in the charity box because it has a cute dog on the front and I am in need of distraction.

  The receptionist looks up at the sound, her dormouse face suddenly animated. ‘I’m an animal lover too,’ she says. ‘Dogs, cats, budgies.’

  ‘I’ve got a fish,’ I say, feeling the need to somehow prove my animal-loving worth.

  Apparently Marie Curie gets me into the club. All of a sudden, the receptionist grows chatty.

  ‘Hit and run,’ she says, nodding at the boy’s trolley being rushed down the hospital corridor. ‘Always nasty.’

  I glance out of the doors. I wish Jem would come back. Then again, he probably doesn’t need reminding of what happens in hit and runs.

  The receptionist is still talking. ‘A lovely Staffie was knocked down with his owner five, six years ago. Couple of joyriders up the Watts. Scarpered, of course. Police never got them, the little criminals.’

  Jem and Studs hit a man with a dog.

  ‘Barney survived,’ she adds, registering my expression. ‘I can see that you’re wondering.’

  I’m suddenly wondering a lot of things. I am also looking very hard at the receptionist with the kind of pinpoint focus normally reserved for microscopes. Now, I feel, might be the moment for first-name terms.