Don’t give the game away too early. Let her hang herself, first . . .
‘Center stage, please, darling,’ Carolyn says. She’s using the same voice she adopted for the telephone call to Lisa’s agent. Imogen trots obediently across the stage and stands in the spotlight. She blinks, and even though I know she can’t see us, I shrink back in my seat.
‘What’s your audition song?’
‘ “Castle on a Cloud,” ’ Imogen—Lisa—says. I hear a sharp intake of breath from behind me, and despite the dark I can picture the outrage on Carolyn’s face. Jess’s audition piece. There’s a pause, then Carolyn speaks again. ‘When you’re ready.’
Imogen’s voice is clear and strong, and for a moment I forget why we’re all here. I close my eyes and let the notes fill the air. I know a place where no one’s lost, I know a place where no one cries . . . I think about the day Imogen arrived at OFA, about the day the music box was planted in Jess’s locker. I think about the day this all started.
Is this the day it all ends?
Carolyn must be thinking the same, because she cuts into Imogen’s song with an abrupt ‘Thank you, darling, that will be all,’ swiftly followed by: ‘Full name and age, please.’ I hold my breath.
Imogen’s gaze is steadfast. She looks directly into the light—directly at us.
She can’t see us, I tell myself silently. But my pulse is racing so loudly I’m surprised everyone can’t hear it.
‘My name is Lisa Daisley, and I’m twenty-one years old.’
And then everything happens so fast. The spotlight snaps off, and the house lights on. Everyone’s on their feet, Adam muttering, What the hell’s going on? and Carolyn yelling at Imogen—at Lisa—You lying bitch! Bronnie imploring everyone to Let’s all just sit down and talk about this, shall we? And in the middle of it all, Lisa Daisley, her mouth wide open.
I expect her to run off—I wonder if Carolyn expects us to chase after her, and decide she can bloody well whistle for it—but Lisa doesn’t move. She’s visibly shocked but, slowly, her mouth closes, and she regains some composure. She gives a bored sigh, and folds her arms across her chest, like the disgruntled teenager we all thought she was.
‘I think it’s about time you told us what you’re playing at,’ Carolyn says. ‘Imogen.’
Lisa looks at Adam, no doubt expecting him to defend her, the way he has done all term, but he’s standing in stunned silence, his face white with shock. She’s played him just like she’s played the rest of us, I think, and I almost feel sorry for him. I hand him the theater program from Bronnie’s keepsake trunk, folded open at the page with Lisa’s bio.
‘She’s not a student,’ I tell him. ‘She’s a professional actress.’ I watch him scan the page, his mouth working but no words forming. Eventually, he looks at Lisa, and slowly he makes his way out of the row of seats and down the aisle toward the stage.
‘You’ve got some explaining to do, young lady. Why did you lie about your age? About your name?’ His voice begins measured, but gradually the volume increases until he’s bellowing.
‘ “What’s in a name?” ’ Imogen—Lisa—says, in a voice thick with sarcasm. ‘ “That which we call a rose, by any other name would—” ’
‘How dare you!’ Whether Adam is referring to Lisa’s presence in his school or to her audacity at mocking his predilection for theater quotes, it’s unclear, but either way, I’ve never seen him so angry. He’s reached the stage now, and he looks to each side, perhaps hoping for steps. Not a yoga devotee, then.
‘What the hell are you doing in my school?’
There’s a flicker of hurt in Lisa’s eyes. Her shoulders drop. ‘I just wanted another shot at it,’ she whispers.
‘Speak up!’ Carolyn calls. ‘You are an actress, after all.’ She draws out the word, catty as her daughter, as she walks towards Adam. Bronnie, Kendall, and I join her, and we stand, looking up at the stage like Lisa’s a statue on a plinth.
Lisa’s eyes fill with tears. ‘I didn’t go to stage school,’ she says. ‘I wanted to, but we couldn’t afford the fees—Mum was on her own, and she was doing two jobs just to keep a roof over our head. So I left school at sixteen, and I worked in McDonald’s, and I went to every single audition in The Stage until finally I got a part.’
‘My heart bleeds,’ Carolyn mutters.
‘I got an agent, and an Equity card, and things really started to take off. It felt like my big break was just around the corner—that I’d get something long-running or high-profile, and I’d be able to take care of Mum when she got older.’ Lisa’s eyes are shining, and I hear a surreptitious sniff from Bronnie. ‘But it didn’t work out that way.’ She hangs her head. ‘After Snow White the auditions dried up, and my agent stopped calling. She said people wanted “fresh talent,” and I wasn’t “fresh” anymore.’ She’s crying properly now, great fat tears that run down her cheeks and soak into her T-shirt.
‘So you lied about your age and applied for my school?’ There’s a note of incredulity in Adam’s voice. Lisa nods.
‘I’ve always looked younger than my age—I was playing twelve-year-olds when I was seventeen. The caliber of agents you attract to your end-of-year shows is legendary’—at this, Adam puffs up with pride—‘and I thought if I could just get in front of them, they might think that I was fresh talent, too, and, and . . .’ She gulps the words, thick with tears. ‘And maybe I’d get a second chance at the only thing I’ve ever been good at. The thing I’ve dreamed of doing my whole life.’ Her confession dissolves into wails.
‘You put the music box in Jess’s locker, to make everyone think Ruby was bullying her,’ Carolyn says. It isn’t a question. Lisa nods.
‘I needed to be the best in the school. I needed Ad— Mr. Racki,’ she corrects herself, ‘to put me forward for auditions, to talk about me to agents.’ She looks down at us, her eyes pleading for an understanding she won’t find. Not from me, anyway. She can turn on the waterworks all she likes.
‘Ruby’s so good at everything,’ Lisa says. ‘I thought if she was worried about school, if she thought someone was after her, it would knock her confidence and . . .’ She tails off.
‘You. Presented. My. Daughter. With. A. Noose.’ Kendall spits the words out like bullets. ‘You sent all those awful notes!’
‘I never meant any harm to her, you have to believe—’
‘You wrote Here lies Ruby Donovan!’ Kendall shouts, and the accusation echoes around the auditorium. Lisa’s shaking, now. She cuts a pathetic figure alone on the stage, her face streaked with mascara. So much for fresh talent. ‘Can you imagine how that made my little girl feel? To see her name on that bench, like it was a grave? And now she’s lying in hospital, having tried to kill herself!’ Now Kendall’s crying, too, and Bronnie moves to put an arm around her.
‘What did Ruby ever do to you?’ Bronnie says.
‘She was competition,’ Lisa says, screwing the heels of her palms into her eyes.
Carolyn bristles. ‘And Jess wasn’t?’
I almost laugh. Only Carolyn could feel slighted that her daughter isn’t perceived as worthy of death threats. I feel a sudden and unfamiliar urge to be with Sadie, to take my non-death-threat-worthy daughter out of this toxic environment. Lisa’s actions disgust me. I might eliminate competition in business, but I play fair. This isn’t playing fair.
‘Your mother would be ashamed of you, young lady,’ Bronnie says, prompting a new bout of tears from Lisa. ‘The noose was bad enough, but what about the slate? That could have killed Ruby!’
Lisa stops crying abruptly. She casts a panicked look at Adam, and I wonder if this is it—this is the moment that’s going to make him call the police, demand justice, do something. But he’s catatonic, his eyes wide with shock, a tremor running through his body. I try to imagine what it would be like to uncover such toxicity in BONDical, just as Adam’s seeing it unfold from OFA, and I decide it’s possible that I too would be rooted to the spot, unable to function. You think you r
un a tight ship, that you know the people you work with. But how well do we ever know our colleagues? Our friends? Our children?
‘I didn’t push the slate onto Ruby,’ Lisa says, but I’m not sure I believe her. It’s too loud, too insistent.
‘Liar!’ Kendall says.
‘Wait a minute,’ Bronnie says. ‘It was Imogen—’ She corrects herself. ‘Sorry, Lisa, who called out that she saw someone on the roof. Lisa didn’t try to kill Ruby—she saved her.’
We look at each other. It doesn’t make sense.
‘I saw the slate slipping,’ Lisa says. ‘It was caught on something, but I could see it was going to fall, so I shouted that someone was up there. I thought it would scare Ruby—make her feel like someone was after her—’
‘Someone was after her,’ Kendall says. ‘You.’ She’s not shouting now, but her voice is full of bitterness, and who can blame her?
‘This is . . .’ Adam casts about for a word. ‘Monstrous,’ he finishes. Yes. It is monstrous. I look at Lisa Daisley, at her slim figure, her blond hair, her striking blue eyes. Evil comes in many forms. This thing of darkness, I think, remembering my classroom readings of The Tempest. I glance at Adam. His bloody quote thing is contagious.
The head’s fists are balled by his sides, and a pulse throbs in the side of his neck. ‘I should call the police.’
There’s a beat. Lisa stares at Adam. Her eyes are dry now—the look in them pure hatred—and I can’t help but wonder if the flurry of tears was all an act, if all of this is just one big performance.
‘And let them find out you’ve been defrauding the Arts Council?’
Bronnie lets out a little cry. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘Oh, I know a lot of things.’ Lisa’s smile is smug, and beside me I feel a surge of rage from Kendall.
‘How dare you stand there, smirking, like you’ve done something clever? My daughter could have died!’ Kendall puts her hands on the stage and leaps up in one fluid moment. I wonder if she’d like details for my Ashtanga class. A look of alarm crosses Lisa’s face as Kendall lunges across the stage with the roar of a tigress protecting her cub.
She’s going to kill her, I think, and I jump onto the stage—not because I care about Lisa Daisley, but because I find I do care about Kendall. And I don’t trust Lisa one bit. Beside me, Carolyn scrambles onto the stage like a pregnant woman getting out of a pool, and Bronnie and Adam are up too, and all that’s missing are the torches and pitchforks.
Lisa turns tail and runs, frantically scrabbling at the black curtains behind her until she finds the gap in the middle.
‘After her!’ Carolyn screams as Lisa disappears through the curtains. We’re only seconds behind her, and the blood sings in my ears as I snatch back the curtain and pull it hard across the stage, only . . .
‘Where the hell is she?’ Kendall looks around in confusion.
‘She was right there,’ Bronnie says.
The rear of the stage is flanked by solid walls. An old piece of painted plywood leans against the back, and a coil of rope gathers dust on the floor. But otherwise the stage is empty.
Lisa Daisley has vanished.
Ghost students, I think, shivering. But then I hear running feet from somewhere within the bowels of the theater, and the slam of the front door echoing down the corridor.
‘What the . . .’ And then I see it. The magician’s friend. The opening in the floor, leading to the crawl space beneath the stage, and from there to freedom.
The bench in the courtyard at OFA has been scrubbed clean, but a pale outline of the graffiti can still be seen. Here lies Ruby Donovan. I shiver. We all wanted to pick up our girls from school today. Needed to. Even Kendall is here, clinging to the reassurance of familiar surroundings, before she goes back to the hospital to be with Ruby. Every few seconds the silence is punctuated by Bronnie or Kendall or me, circling around questions that have no answers.
‘How could she?’
‘What possessed her?’
‘Should we have realized sooner?’
Only Carolyn is silent. She stands a few steps away, still part of the group, but somehow disconnected. Her expression is dark, and every now and then her face moves like she’s having conversations in her head.
‘What are we going to tell the girls?’ Bronnie says.
‘The truth.’ Kendall is firm. ‘If you lie to kids, how can they learn who to trust? Besides, our kids are smart—they’ll figure it out themselves if we don’t tell them.’
For once, Kendall and I are on the same page. Bronnie looks anxious, but she nods slowly.
‘I guess I can’t wrap Bel up in cotton wool for ever.’
I glance at Carolyn, ready to exchange who’d have thought? glances, but she’s still in a world of her own, staring at the school like she has X-ray vision. I find it odd that she’s been so badly affected by Lisa’s confession—after all, she was the one who found Lisa’s photo, who set up the platform for her downfall. I wonder if perhaps she’s thinking about the times she accused Ruby of faking the threats against herself; if she’s thinking of the way Ruby bullied Jess last year, and how it could have been Jess driven to attempt suicide, not the other way around.
But then she turns to us and speaks, and it’s something else entirely.
‘I don’t buy it.’
We stare at her.
‘Why was there no school record for Imogen? The fake records served a purpose, but if Lisa applied with a fake ID for Imogen, why wasn’t there a file created?’
As one, we turn to Bronnie.
‘I had nothing to do with it, I swear! I didn’t even know there was no file for Imogen—I mean Lisa—until you told us, Elise!’
Methinks the lady doth protest too much . . .
I’ve no time to dwell on Bronnie’s claim, because Carolyn is in full flow. ‘How did Lisa know Ruby was “the competition”?’ She makes quotes in the air and doesn’t wait for an answer, although I’m not sure any of us has one to give. I certainly don’t. How did Lisa know?
‘And why Ruby?’ Carolyn says. ‘Why not Bel? Let’s face it, she’s got more stage presence in her little finger than the rest of the school put together.’
Bronnie flushes with pride. Carolyn takes a few paces to the left, then turns and strides back—a leading lady with an audience in the palm of her hand. ‘How did Lisa know that Jess’s audition song was “Castle on a Cloud”?’ A sharp breeze blows through the courtyard, and an empty can of Coke skitters against the concrete slabs. I pull up the collar of my coat around my neck as I try to find the answer. Could the audition pieces be listed online? Might Lisa have come to a revue last year, when the girls all performed? Carolyn is still pacing, still throwing out questions with the sharpness of a barrister.
‘The music box was planted in Jess’s locker the day Lisa arrived at OFA.’ She wheels round, jabbing a finger toward us. Bronnie flinches. ‘The same day. How could she possibly do that? How could she do any of it?’ Carolyn waits for her words to sink in. But she hasn’t finished, and there’s a hard knot in my chest, because I know exactly what she’s going to say.
‘Unless, of course, she had help.’
The empty Coke can throws itself against the wall with a clatter. The wind circles the courtyard, the high walls producing an eerie moaning sound I’ve never noticed before. I glance up at the roof. Was it an accident? Or did Lisa really see someone up there? Someone who wanted to hurt Ruby? Someone who was helping Lisa get what she wanted . . .
‘From who?’ Kendall says. She looks wildly around the courtyard, as though a police line-up might suddenly appear. I tap my fingers together. I’m trying to slot together the pieces of a jigsaw; I’ve got the corners and the edges, but the middle is missing, it’s muddled and blurred. I look at Carolyn. The brooding look has disappeared, and there’s a spark in her eyes. An uneasy feeling settles over me. It’s always you, I think. First on the scene, first to discover the clues . . .
‘Someone who knows Ruby,
’ Carolyn says. ‘Who knows Jess. Someone who could pass that information to Lisa. Someone who didn’t want to get their hands dirty.’
Bronnie gasps. ‘You’re not suggesting it was one of our girls?’
Another piece of the puzzle slips into place. ‘No,’ I say slowly, my eyes trained on our mutual friend. ‘I don’t think she is.’ The uneasy feeling grows until it’s pressing hard against my chest. ‘I think Carolyn’s suggesting it was one of us.’
I gave quite a performance, don’t you think? Worthy of a lead role, an encore, a solo curtain call. A Tony-winning production, with me in the star part, and the chorus nobodies scurrying about at my feet. They all think I’m one of them, singing from the same song sheet, dancing the same steps, but it’s all been an act. All the while I’ve been following my own script. My own agenda. And it’s almost time for the final act . . .
9
Finding Grace
Sophie Hannah
CAROLYN
Bronnie and Kendall stare at me, slack-jawed with shock. Elise and I exchange a look, and I know she’s thinking what I’m thinking: Are they really so naïve?
‘One of us?’ Bronnie says finally, her voice cracking on the last word. ‘No, I don’t . . . No one thinks that’s possible.’
‘I do,’ I say.
Elise backs me up. ‘There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be one of us.’
‘What are you talking about? I’m not conspiring with anybody.’ Kendall sounds panicked. She looks at Elise, then at me, then back at Elise. ‘Are you, Elise?’
‘No, but if I were, I’d hardly tell you. That’s how it works.’
‘What about you, Bronnie?’ I ask. ‘Any conspiring to declare?’
Her face crumples. ‘Please don’t tell the police,’ she whispers.
‘What?’ It can’t be this easy. ‘You’re admitting it was you? You and Lisa have been colluding all this time?’
The Understudy Page 24