by Hazel Osmond
The phone on the desk rang.
Matt, it could be Matt.
It was Lisa – Lisa gabbling so fast Jennifer had to tell her to slow down.
‘OK, OK, but listen, Jen. I’m wafting about in my dressing gown early on when I look outside and there’s only Robbie Trentham.’
‘Robbie?’
‘Get a life, Jen. Striker for Newcastle. Lush beyond lush. Just standing there in my street, not even eight o’clock, looking under the bonnet of his car. Next thing he’s coming up the front steps. Bloody Dad gets to the door before me, but I’m not far behind, sucking in me belly, pushing my puppies out … I mean, I haven’t got a trace of slap on. Says he’s got some strange knocking under his bonnet, managed to get the car to Dad’s garage, found it shut, asked around, got sent here. Could Dad have a look? Bless him, he sounded really nervous.’
Jennifer heard Lisa breathe in and then she was off again.
‘Dad’s like, “Wow, can I have a look at a Ferrari? Yes, I can.” Anyway, while he’s doing that I ask Robbie does he want some coffee? And get this, Jen, we chatted on like anything. When Dad came back, said he couldn’t find anything wrong. Robbie suggested we took it for a longer drive, so I ran upstairs, just chucked something on …’
Jennifer doubted that.
‘… twenty minutes later we’re haring down the A1.’
‘That’s incredible. So where did he take you?’
‘Leeds. Yeah, just booking into this hotel. Lots of smoked glass, there’s this big piano—’
‘No, wait, what? Lisa, you have to be back for six-thirty this evening, seven at the latest. Lisa? Lisa? Don’t do this.’
Lisa’s voice was surprisingly firm. ‘Listen to yourself. I’m booking into a hotel with Robbie Trentham. Come on, when am I ever going to get another chance like this? It’s fate: he’d normally be training, but he’s got a groin strain.’ There was an earthy laugh. ‘Tell Finlay for me, will you, Jen? And remember, keep your chin up and don’t take any crap from Jocelyn about that costume hanging off you.’
With a sudden jolt, Jennifer realised what Lisa meant.
‘No, Lisa, come back …’
Jennifer felt Sheila remove the phone from her hand and replace it on the desk.
‘I … I,’ Jennifer said, starting to feel paralysed by the dawning realisation of what was likely to happen now.
Sheila nodded, ‘Aye, aye indeed. Do I gather Lisa’s not going to make the performance tonight?’
Jennifer nodded.
‘Well, I’ve bought tickets. Lucky you’re the understudy.’
‘No, no, I’m not.’ Had she shouted that?
‘Why not? You’re the prompt, aren’t you, must know it by heart. And didn’t you say you’d done it at school? Done it at Manchester? I bet you more or less know all the words.’ Sheila was warming to the idea. ‘Yeah, you’ll have to do it, like in those films … the show must go on and the understudy saves the day.’
‘This isn’t a film, it’s real life!’ Jennifer knew this time she had shouted, the hysteria rising in her throat.
A man in the World War Two history section turned round and shushed her.
‘Oh shush your ruddy self,’ Sheila yelled back.
Mack waited for the doorbell to ring and knew he ought to go and pack his bags: whether this worked or whether it didn’t, he’d be out of here tonight. Although what was there to pack? Not his walking stuff, not his terrible jeans. Let them all stay here and rot. He didn’t want anything to remind him of this job when it was over.
He was going to shed Matt Harper like a skin. Trouble was, he wasn’t certain there was anything underneath that skin any more.
The ring on the bell finally came at ten minutes past twelve and he wondered which person in a panic it would be.
It was Doug, barely comprehensible, and Mack had to act amazed at his news. Everyone felt Jennifer was the obvious choice to take over, but she was adamant she wasn’t doing it. Would Matt come and talk to her?
Mack had suspected that, offered the part on a plate, Jennifer would initially push it away.
‘Finlay will persuade her,’ he said, getting his fleece off the back of the chair.
Doug didn’t look particularly optimistic.
The changing room was crowded when they arrived and somebody had moved the screens against the wall to make more space. The only person missing was Jennifer. The empty seat between Neale and Finlay was, he presumed, where she had been sitting.
‘Here comes the cavalry,’ Angus said.
‘We were just discussing our options,’ Finlay explained. ‘Jennifer feels she cannot take over from Lisa and we must respect that decision. I might be able to persuade one of my sixth-form drama students to read the part, or we bite the bullet and cancel.’
You are not cancelling this. She has to do this. If I don’t give her this, what else am I going to leave her with?
The room was noisy now, people talking across each other, and Mack could tell opinion was roughly divided into two camps: those who felt Jennifer shouldn’t have been put in this position, and those who thought that, really, why couldn’t she have a go?
Had anyone voiced that last opinion? Was that why Jennifer’s chair was empty?
‘I hope no one has upset Jennifer?’ He looked directly at Jocelyn for that last bit.
‘No, no,’ Finlay said. ‘We’ve all been very gentle with her, Matt. She’s outside taking a phone call.’
He pushed his way from the room and went outside as quickly as he could without running. He listened. She was round the back of the hall.
Jennifer had been thankful Brenda’s mobile had rung when it did and gave her an excuse to get away from all those eyes. People were being kind, but she was sure that would change if they voted to cancel the last performance. Everyone would forget then that this was all down to Lisa, not her. She thought again about the possibility of actually getting on that stage. No, she still wanted to throw up and run away, or even run away and then throw up. This was one thing on which she had to stand firm, not try to please anyone but herself.
She leaned against the back wall of the hall and rang the number showing on the register of missed calls. It would be Cress, who else? She imagined her sitting up in bed in the dark of a New Mexico night.
‘Jen, listen,’ Cress said as soon as she answered, ‘I know I said I wouldn’t be in touch again till tomorrow … your tomorrow … but Brenda’s just rung to tell me Lisa’s on heat …’
‘Ah.’ Jennifer waited for yet another person to try to persuade her to get up on that stage. But Cressida wasn’t saying anything.
‘Are you still there?’ Jennifer asked.
‘I am, just thinking what to say to you …’
‘Forget about me,’ Jennifer said quickly, ‘you don’t sound right. Is it just because you’ve been woken up … or has something else happened?’
There was another long period of silence before Cressida said wearily, ‘Jen, I told you … I’ll explain it all tomorrow when I see you—’
‘When you see me? Cress—’
‘Just listen, Jen. This is serious. My life is about to go down the tubes and America’s going to chew me up and spit me out; I don’t know if I’ll even be allowed to finish this film. But sod it. I’ve given into temptation and it’s only a matter of days before somebody twigs what’s going on. Oh Jen, I’m as scared as hell, but absolutely, absolutely walking on air.’
‘Cress, sweetheart, please calm down—’
‘And the sex, Jen, it makes everything that I’ve got up to before seem clod-hopping.’ There was a high, hysterical giggle. ‘Sorry, I’ve turned into this romantic fool. That’s what happens when you meet someone like this, your brain scrambles. I feel like I’ve been walking around with my eyes closed. It’s … it’s complex, though, Jen, that’s why I need to talk to you face to face, and Auntie Bren and Uncle Ray. I can’t talk about it on the phone, you must understand that?’
‘No, I thought …
Cress, hang on, what about the film?’
‘Not needed for a few days.’
‘Look, Cress, you don’t need to trail over here, nothing can be that bad. I mean, I know Mum will be a bit lemon-drop about … the plumber … you know, having a wife—’
Again she thought Cressida had gone, she was so silent.
‘Cress?’
‘I’m here, I’m here. So … you’ve worked out it’s him?’
‘Cress, how long have we known each other? Come on.’
This time the laugh from Cress was a wry one.
‘I’ll talk to Mum for you,’ Jennifer said. ‘There must be something special about him if you love him.’
‘You never judge, Jen, do you?’ Cressida said softly, ‘never ever, not once. Look, I’m coming over, don’t try to stop me. Gotta go now. Love you, Jen … and Jen? I’ve worked out what I wanted to say to you. One life, that’s your lot. You’ve got to grab it with both hands. I know you think yours has slipped away from you, but things happen, Jen, unexpected things, your life can go in new directions. Be Viola, Jen, do it for yourself.’
‘Cress, Cress,’ Jennifer said urgently down the phone, even though she knew Cress had gone.
She turned to see Matt.
‘Cress?’ he asked. ‘Trying to persuade you to do the part?’
She wasn’t really taking in that it was him, or what he was asking. She was still trying to process how Cress could have fallen for a man like Rory.
‘No, no,’ she said, ‘well, only a bit. She’s … she’s coming over to England to explain it all to Mum and Dad. To me.’
‘Explain it all?’
Jennifer was so thankful to be able to talk to him it all came running out. ‘It’s Rory Sylvester she’s fallen for; I suspected it was and she’s just confirmed it. Unbelievable, a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turnaround. I can only think it’s a mistake, she’s lonely and hounded by the press – he’s shown all this interest in her—’
‘Jennifer, stop talking for a minute,’ Matt said, and she was struck by how uncomfortable he looked, as though he’d rather be anywhere else than standing in front of her. She felt him lift the phone from her hands, and then he bent down, picked up her handbag and shoved the phone into it.
‘Forget about Cress,’ he said. ‘I hear you’ve refused to take over from Lisa? Do you want to tell me why?’
CHAPTER 31
Mack wondered if he could have stopped time if he’d clamped his hand over Jennifer’s mouth before she got out the words ‘Rory Sylvester’. But there it was, finally, the confirmation of what he and O’Dowd had suspected for weeks.
Now there was only one thing he could do to sweeten what was going to happen next and he was damned if he’d let her run away from it. He ignored the way her eyes were asking him to give her an easy time, and her heartfelt, ‘You know why I can’t do it, Matt. Please … don’t make me spell it out.’
‘Jennifer,’ he said, ‘just take a deep breath and listen, and don’t worry, I’m not going to wade in with all that blunt honesty you’ve come to expect. I want to start by saying what I should have said that day when I was trying to apologise in the library, remember? Which is … I can’t imagine how you came to terms with having your face scarred; seeing your dream of acting professionally disappear.’ As he’d expected, her chin went right down at that, and he was looking at her centre parting and her wonderful blonde hair.
‘I don’t know how you cope every time you catch your reflection, or every time someone stares – being reminded that you don’t look like you used to, yet inside you’re exactly the same. It’s hard for anyone, but particularly for a woman, particularly when you wanted to be an actress – you got a kind of double whammy. Suddenly your talent counts for nothing.
‘You’ve shown more courage than I think I could – picking yourself up, getting back out and about; and when incidents like that one in the pub happen, I can understand why you just put your head down and withdraw. The only thing is, Jennifer, if you can’t work out another way of dealing with that kind of thing, if you just go on feeling all this shame and embarrassment, little by little you’ll think all those nosy, rude bastards out there have a point. You’ll believe you shouldn’t try to do anything that draws attention to yourself. You’ll keep on doing the safe thing which probably won’t be the same as doing what you really want.’
He saw her chin come up sharply at that and then she was bending for her bag and he knew she was intending to run. He got hold of her wrists and coaxed her back into a standing position, kicking her bag to one side as he did so and pushing her gently against the wall. He really had to fight the urge to press his body right against hers and feel her against his chest.
‘Which brings us neatly to acting,’ he said, staring directly into her eyes, daring her to lower her chin. God she really did have beautiful eyes, like the sky in summer.
‘Now if, hand on heart, you tell me that you can’t stand in for Lisa because the words are too rusty, or you don’t know the moves, or the costume won’t fit, that’s fine.’ He tried not to look at the way her chest was rising and falling as if she was panicking. ‘But if none of those things is true, you’ve got to ask yourself: what’s the worst that can happen tonight? You’re on home ground here. People will be rooting for you and yes, they’ll look at you, but I’m betting that after ten minutes they’ll just be thinking about Viola.’
She didn’t say anything, didn’t look like she was going to and that was when he let go of her wrists and put his hands gently on her shoulders. It would have been so easy to have kept on going and wrapped his arms right around her, if she’d have let him.
‘So that’s a “no”, about the acting?’
She did something that looked like a nod.
‘OK, then I lied about the blunt honesty: here it comes. If you don’t do this tonight, that bloody windscreen has won.’ Her eyes flared at that, and he felt her start to struggle. He continued to hold her. ‘It’s won, Jennifer, and all those people who believe we ought to be airbrushed into looking the same, they’ve won too; and everyone who really believes that people who are a different shape or size or even colour from them are somehow inferior. And those who don’t like to see people with disabilities out and about. Oh, and those men in the pub, they’ve won too. In the end, you’re living the life those kinds of idiots want you to live – apologetic, not making waves, buying into their narrow view of what people should look like. Whereas don’t you think you should be living the kind of life you want? And really, Jennifer, why are you paying those wankers more attention than the people willing you on? Your mum and dad, Bryony, Danny, Cress? Everyone who really wants to see you being you?’
A little part of him wanted her to register he hadn’t included Alex in that list.
She was now looking like he had slapped her repeatedly.
‘It’s not fair, Jennifer. None of this is fair. People can have the blackest hearts and look like angels, and yet you’re kind and true and lovely and you have to put up with all this crap. You’ve got scars on your face, but they’re just a part of you, Jen. They don’t define you and if you let them do that, they’re always going to dictate what you do with your life.’
This time he didn’t hold on to her when she tried to struggle free.
‘I can’t, really I can’t,’ she wailed at him, her voice coming in gasps. ‘Don’t talk to me like this, you have no idea what it’s like, how sick I feel just thinking about going on that stage.’ He saw tears start to well in her eyes and it made him want to smudge them away with his thumbs. ‘I would love to do it, just love to do it … but it terrifies me.’
‘Of course it does. But just think beyond that first step … you might get to fly again. That’s what I felt yesterday, like I was right there in that moment, flying.’
Whatever happened, he would always remember that look she gave him, as if he had jabbed his finger in the most sensitive nerve he could find. She stooped for her bag and barged past h
im so hard she almost knocked him backwards.
Had he made it worse? Should he have even tried to make her brave when he was about to sabotage her recovery so spectacularly? He had a nerve … but maybe he was the only one that did. Or perhaps he was trying to give her this one night of doing what she loved to make himself feel better. He was too strung out to think about it any further.
He walked round to the front of the hall and looked at all that green. Soon it would be a memory and he’d be back in the streets of Bath, a richer and an infinitely poorer man.
He had no idea how he would go back to his old life. This place he’d started by hating now seemed the only logical home for him. With Jennifer. The thought of leaving it and leaving her twisted something inside him, but whether it was his heart or his guts he didn’t know.
He looked back at the hall. If he’d got it wrong she wouldn’t do the play and he would leave her with nothing but the bitterness of all his deceit and lies. He looked at his watch. Three p.m. already. He’d give it a few more minutes and if nothing happened, he’d go back to the cottage, pack his bags and call for a taxi. That would be it. He could barely breathe with the thought that he might just have seen Jennifer for the last time.
‘Hoy!’ It was Doug, running out of the hall with that huge brick of a mobile. ‘Someone wants to speak to you.’ His masking-tape eyebrows all but disappeared under his hair.
The voice on the other end of the phone was clipped, cultured.
‘Cressida here,’ she said, ‘Cressida Chartwell,’ as if the surname was at all necessary. ‘Jen’s just told me you’ve given her a real dressing-down.’
‘Uh, yes. I have.’ He was sure she must know he was a lying, cheating scumbag just from the sound of his voice.
There was a softening of her tone. ‘Well, I don’t know what you said to her, Matt Harper, but she’s just rung me back to tell me she’s going to try and do it. She sounds a bit wobbly, but I’m sure if you hold her hand she’ll get through it. And, Matt …’