by Lynsey James
Of course I knew exactly why he’d come to the village; he wanted to lie low until the scandal died down. It was whether he’d admit it that I was interested in.
His cheeks turned red and he rubbed the back of his neck while looking down at the table. ‘Let’s just say I’ve found myself with some free time on my hands and I fancied a trip to the seaside. LA and London can get a bit boring, and my schedule unexpectedly cleared itself so I thought why not. What about you?’
Pffft, free time my arse.
‘I live here,’ I replied with a smile. ‘Luna Bay born and bred.’
‘So if I need a guided tour of this place, you’re the one I should come to?’ Ethan took the liberty of taking the spare teacup and pouring himself a cup of tea. ‘I mean, if anyone knows the ins and outs of Luna Bay, I’m guessing it’ll be you.’
Oh balls. Giving a guided tour of my hometown to a Hollywood megastar wasn’t exactly part of my plan to stay under the radar. When my brain didn’t immediately spit out a viable excuse, I began to panic.
‘Actually…’ I paused for a moment, praying for inspiration. Luckily, my wish was granted within seconds. ‘I’m helping out with the local pantomime, so I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else to give you the grand tour.’
Ethan’s face fell, although he tried to cover it with an incredibly winning smile. ‘Just my luck eh? What’s the panto this year? Haven’t been to one of those in ages!’
I stared at him for a moment, unable to believe that a man who’d won a BAFTA cared what pantomime a little village in Yorkshire was putting on.
‘It’s Cinderella this year,’ I replied, almost laughing at how surreal the situation was. ‘I’m not quite sure how it’s going to turn out, but it’ll be a good laugh if nothing else.’
He sipped his tea and grinned. ‘Now this I have to see. What part are you playing?’
‘Oh, I’m not one of the performers!’ I laughed and broke off a forkful of carrot cake. ‘I’ll leave that to the professionals, I think. No, I’m just helping paint the sets and stuff.’
I didn’t fancy telling him about my past experience of being on stage; that would open up far too many questions for him to ask. Plus, I didn’t want to delve into my past tragedies with someone I barely knew.
Ethan cocked his head to one side and frowned. ‘Really? I’d have thought you’d be a natural on stage; you stepped into the role of first-aider pretty well if I remember. You knew exactly what you were doing.’
There was something about the look in his eyes that made my stomach do a backflip. I ignored it; it was probably my stomach begging for more cake, as if it hadn’t had enough already.
‘Yeah well, there’s a world of difference between cleaning a bloody nose and starring in the local pantomime,’ I said with a small chuckle. ‘Anyway, I think it’s my turn to ask the questions now: how come your schedule “unexpectedly cleared itself”? I’d have thought you’d be jetting off here, there and everywhere for film shoots and press junkets. And why did you really come to Luna Bay of all places? It wasn’t just for a trip to the seaside was it?’
He bit his bottom lip and stared off into the distance. I could almost hear the cogs of his brain turning as he formulated an answer for me.
‘I may as well tell you because it’ll be in tomorrow’s papers anyway, if it isn’t already in today’s.’ He heaved a sigh and put his head in his hands. ‘I got myself into a difficult situation with someone I really care about and it kind of blew up in my face.’
I thought about probing further, but the look of pain on his face stopped me in my tracks. It was none of my business if he was conducting a secret affair with his best friend’s wife or Gwyneth bloody Paltrow. I barely knew the man; his private life was nothing to do with me. I knew from experience what it was like to have people thinking they had the right to know every detail of your life; it wasn’t fun.
Ethan continued. ‘As for why I’m here, I need a place to get away from it all for a while. I didn’t fancy going back to LA and something about Luna Bay just drew me in. I’ve driven past it on the way to my dad’s house in Harrogate, but never had the chance to visit before now. There’s something magical about the place, don’t you think?’
A dreamy expression crossed his face as he stared around the café and out to the beach below. He sighed deeply, before snapping himself out of it and clearing his throat. My heart swelled with pride to see someone who saw Luna Bay’s unique magic as much as I did. That was a truly rare find.
‘A-anyway, you don’t want to listen to me going on about my shockingly bad personal life! I only came in here to get out of the rain for a bit and I’ve gone and hijacked your afternoon! If you get a break from helping out with the panto, maybe we could do that guided tour after all?’
Oh God, that dreaded guided tour again. He really wasn’t going to let me get away with that, was he?
‘Well you never know eh?’ I felt myself begin to sweat as I tried to remain cool and composed. He really wasn’t helping my plan to keep myself to myself. ‘Are you staying in the village, then?’
He nodded. ‘Yup, I’ve just checked in at the Sunflower Cottage guest house up on the hill. It’s lovely there and the couple that runs it seem really friendly. I think I’ve picked a pretty good place to keep my head down for a while.’
‘You have,’ I replied, ‘their breakfasts are out of this world!’
My stomach did the equivalent of a gold standard gymnastics routine as a realisation hit me. If he was staying at Sunflower Cottage, that meant he’d be there when I went to the Breakfast Club. For some reason, the prospect of running into him every Friday didn’t entirely fill me with dread.
‘Well I’ll look forward to those,’ Ethan said with a smile. ‘Anyway, I should get going and let you get back to your tea. It was nice bumping into you again, Alice; good to know there’s at least one friendly face around here. Maybe I’ll see you around.’
‘Yeah maybe.’ I gave him a shy little grin in return then turned my attentions to my carrot cake.
He scraped his chair back and stood up. At his full height, it was a wonder he didn’t bang his head on the café’s roof. A couple of women took that as their cue to approach him and began cooing over how lovely he was and handing him things to autograph. I watched him for a second, struck by how at ease he was with it all. He seemed to genuinely love talking to people, which was a rarity for those constantly in the spotlight. Plus he’d already fallen under Luna Bay’s spell; what wasn’t to like?
Yes, I said to myself as I poured my sixth cup of tea, having Ethan Fox around Luna Bay won’t be bad at all.
*
After Ethan left the café with a flurry of adoring fans trailing in his wake, Diane subjected me to an intense interrogation.
‘Come on, lady, spill! How do you know a Hollywood hunk like him? Did you meet him during your Broadway days? He seemed quite taken with you, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
She gave me a knowing look and I felt a pang of hurt in my stomach. For a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on, having someone think that Ethan fancied me felt like a betrayal to Jamie’s memory.
‘He wasn’t,’ I insisted, hoping to bring an end to the matter. ‘I was in Fox’s department store the other day, he got smacked in the face by a revolving door and I offered to help him get cleaned up. That’s all.’
I hoped that would put paid to any daft rumours of him fancying me. My heart belonged to Jamie and it always would. Nobody could change that, whether they were a Hollywood hunk or not.
‘Anyway,’ I added, ‘as if he’d look twice at me! He could probably get all the Victoria’s Secret Angels to do a conga for him if he wanted to.’
Diane laughed as she cut us both a slice of her best chocolate fudge cake. ‘Don’t sell yourself short, Alice! You’re a lovely woman and by the look on his face, Ethan saw that too. You’ve had a tough few years, so why not just enjoy the attention? It’s not every day a film star sets his sights
on you!’
She gave me a nudge and I did my best not to show how uncomfortable the conversation was making me. I forced a smile onto my face and shovelled cake into my mouth at an alarming rate, trying to ignore the ever-growing ache inside me.
*
Grief does strange things to people. It turns you inside out, kicks you round like a football and leaves you in a heap on the floor afterwards. The worst thing it does, however, is rob you of your ability to live the life you once had, the one you lived before one single event ruined everything.
That was largely why I found myself on my bedroom floor, crying my eyes out after Diane’s light-hearted comment about Ethan. When I’d arrived back at my cottage, I’d immediately run upstairs to my room, shut the door and surrounded myself with Jamie’s things. I needed to feel him around me, to try and bring back some of the magic that had been cruelly snatched from me three years ago.
‘Look at me,’ I wept as I clutched my favourite picture of him. ‘I’m sitting here bawling my eyes out because someone reckons an A-list Hollywood star fancies me! What a mess eh? You’d laugh if you could see me now.’
I looked at the photo and felt my stomach twist itself into knots. Jamie had never felt so far away from me. Talking to him usually helped me feel close to him, but now it felt like I was just talking to a photo of someone I’d known a lifetime ago. The sound of his voice, his smell, the way his nose crinkled when he laughed… The memories of all those things, which had once been so vivid in my mind, were starting to fade around the edges.
That hurt more than anything. I wasn’t ready to let him go yet; I wasn’t sure I ever would be.
Chapter Eight
The panto’s second rehearsal didn’t go much better than the first.
Christabel spent most of the time critiquing the character essays she’d had everyone write and picking fights with people who’d made veiled digs about her directorial style.
‘If the “tyrannical dictator” you feel is “fatally strangling your creative energy” happens to be me, Eileen, then maybe you should give your role to someone else? Preferably someone who, unlike you, has more charisma than a lettuce leaf!’
Eileen, a dainty little woman with blonde curls, shot up from her seat on the stage and marched towards the theatre’s front door.
‘I’m not staying here to be insulted,’ she fumed. ‘You can find someone else to play your wicked stepmother. I quit!’
With a little harrumph, she spun on her heel and flounced out of the theatre, slamming the door loudly behind her. Christabel rounded on the remaining four cast members with a rather menacing look on her face. Her eyes were wide and shone with a barely hidden rage that she was struggling to keep beneath the surface.
‘Now, would anyone else like to walk out before we begin?’ Her voice sent a shiver down my spine and she wasn’t even talking to me.
Everyone murmured that they’d like to stay and a rather unnerving smile spread across her fuchsia lips. I couldn’t see how she could possibly continue rehearsals with four cast members, but knowing Christabel she’d find a way.
‘Right!’ She clapped her hands and clambered up onto the stage, forcing everyone to make way for her. ‘Let’s all pretend to be clouds floating on a summer breeze.’
This time, the cast didn’t complain; I guessed they were all too scared of her. They got to their feet and tried their best to follow their director’s lead by getting up on their tiptoes, sticking their arms out and waltzing about the stage. It was quite a funny sight, but I also found myself feeling sorry for them. They all looked utterly miserable and I guessed they were cursing the day they’d signed up for the pantomime.
I badly wanted to carry on working on the ballroom scene I was painting and let them get on with it; that was definitely what Anonymous Alice would’ve done. I did my best to focus on making the ballroom look as beautiful and grand as possible, but my old theatrical instincts nagged away at me.
You can’t let this happen, they said, you know what makes a good show and this isn’t it!
I tried my best to silence them. This was just about dipping my toe in the theatre again; I wasn’t looking to fling myself head first into the production. I was nowhere near ready to fall back in love with theatre yet; doing the panto was just the first step in what would be a long and difficult journey. Moving on after the last three years and getting my life back would be hard enough without storming in and taking charge of an entire pantomime. Then again, I didn’t see how any of us were going to work with a woman who made an army drill sergeant look like a shrinking violet.
‘OK now let’s all be flowers emerging from the ground into a beautiful springtime morning. Get on the floor and curl up into a ball, slowly rise up and BURST out of the soil! Come on, show the world your beautiful petals!’
That was the final straw. I threw down my paintbrush and stormed towards the stage, propelled by all the anger and sadness that had been swirling inside me since I’d realised Jamie’s photo didn’t help me feel close to him any more.
‘Christabel, you have to stop this! This has nothing to do with rehearsing a bloody pantomime; it’s just making everyone look and feel stupid.’
All at once, a deadly silence fell across the stage. The cast members shuffled towards the backstage area, obviously not wanting to witness Christabel erupt with rage. Out the corner of my eye, I saw Callum staring at me, his mouth hanging slightly open. I stood my ground, not caring about the consequences. I was only a set painter after all. What could she do to me?
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Alice, but you are here to help with backstage preparations – not to criticise the way I direct!’
‘That was before you had everyone pretending to be clouds, trees and feathers! I’ve come to two rehearsals now and you’ve done about five minutes of actual rehearsing. The rest’s been all this arty-farty stuff that isn’t going to help anyone when it comes to opening night. Why don’t you skip all this and do a proper run-through, let everyone practise their lines and what have you? There’s only a month to go until we open and they need to practise.’
Christabel’s face went from pink to scarlet. She was getting ready to blow and when she did, it wouldn’t be a pretty sight.
‘What I’m doing…’ Her voice was dangerously low and soft, like she was just minutes away from letting rip. ‘Is preparing this bunch of amateurs to take to the stage and do a decent job. Polishing a set of extremely mediocre turds if you like. This pantomime is my life. Every year I hope that I’ll get something better than the poor selection of performers who walk through those doors to audition, and every year I’m disappointed! I have to somehow cobble together a show with people who can’t even tell stage right from stage left. I may use techniques that Miss Broadway here doesn’t agree with, but quite frankly it’s making the best of a bad lot. Anyway, if you know so much about theatre, why aren’t you performing on stage? Why have you shut yourself away painting sets?! You probably know you can’t cut the mustard even amongst this lot.’
The cast gradually stepped forward, expressions of utter disgust set into their faces. Lauren was the first to step forward.
‘So that’s what you really think of us, is it?’ Her huge brown eyes shone with tears. ‘We’re a set of mediocre turds? Thanks a lot! We may as well all walk out now.’
The others murmured in agreement and headed towards the steps leading down from the stage.
‘Go on, walk out! See if I care!’ Christabel yelled. ‘You lot couldn’t act your way out of a paper bag!’
‘Actually…’ Lauren’s voice stopped everyone in their tracks. ‘Why should we miss out on the fun of being in the panto? That’s why we all signed up, isn’t it? To have a laugh and get up on the stage. I think what we really need is a director who knows what they’re doing. Like Alice.’
My head snapped up and my mouth dropped open. This had to be some sort of joke. A note of panic ran through me when the other cast members started nodding their heads and
voicing their agreement.
‘Guys, I can’t! I-I haven’t been on stage for such a long time.’
Unfortunately, there seemed to be no dissuading Lauren from her idea. She jumped up and down on the spot, clapping her hands with glee.
‘But you’d be perfect,’ she insisted, running up to me and clutching my arm. ‘You’ve performed all over the world and you know what it takes to make a good show. There’s no-one better to direct our pantomime!’
Out the corner of my eye, I could see Christabel’s face turn a worrying shade of puce. She looked like she’d quite happily strangle me, given half the chance.
‘This was your grand plan all along, wasn’t it?’ She stormed across to me and I reared back, worried that she was about to put me in a headlock. ‘You swanned in, pretending you had no interest whatsoever in doing anything other than helping out backstage, but the whole time you really wanted to take over didn’t you?’
‘No of course I didn’t!’ I cried. ‘But you have to admit that getting everyone to run around pretending to be feathers isn’t achieving a lot. You need to rehearse the material and give everyone time to get into character! The way you’re going, nobody will have a clue what they’re supposed to be doing.’
Christabel flinched and I could’ve sworn I saw her icy mask slip for a split second.
‘I’m not trying to take over,’ I added softly, ‘I just want to see the pantomime do well, just like you do. You’re the director here; I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. I just think you need to focus more on the actual pantomime, that’s all.’
Unfortunately, she didn’t look convinced. She thrust a pile of papers into my hands, her lips pursed and eyes glistening with tears.
‘Since I’m such a terrible director, you can take over.’ Her voice wobbled dangerously, as if she was on the verge of crying. ‘I’m obviously not needed here, so why don’t you take over the reins and see if you can do any better?’
Without giving me a chance to reply, she spun on her heel and left the theatre as quickly as she could. The huge doors that separated the auditorium from the foyer slammed so loudly that everyone almost jumped out of their skin.