‘It’s still going on,’ she tells me. ‘Elise and Dad. I overheard Sadie laughing about it.’
I didn’t know Ruby or Sadie had known about the one-off, let alone . . .
‘I could fucking kill them! Elise, Dad, Sadie! And Bel and Jess for laughing! I could kill them all.’
I should make efforts to soothe her. That’s what a proper mother would do: rein in Ruby’s worst instincts, try to instill perspective.
But the betrayal is sinking in. The colossal, monumental betrayal. I’m sure Bronnie sat next to me in that theater, knowing, and Carolyn must be smirking backstage, and Elise actually told her daughter, and her daughter repeated it to friends who found it equally hilarious, and my very own husband, Ruby’s very own father . . .
In the end, it’s Ruby and me on the outs once again. We’ve been trying so hard to be so good and for what? No one else is.
Maybe those aren’t Ruby’s worst instincts; maybe they’re some of her best.
It might be time for some mother-daughter bonding.
CAROLYN
‘This is our whole problem, and you can’t see it. You expect me to deal with it. Why?’
‘Because all of this is your . . . doing.’
‘ “Creation,” not “doing.” “All of this is your creation,” ’ I hiss from my spot in the wings. ‘For fuck’s sake.’ Is it too much to ask that they don’t massacre my elegant, carefully written lines?
‘I can’t fight about this anymore. I have to go to work. Is there anything you need, before I go?’
‘Oh, just go. Just leave.’
I watch as the boy (playing a man) on the receiving end of this instruction does as he’s told and just leaves, without delivering the line that ought to accompany his exit upstage right.
I shake my head in frustration. I can’t understand why Olly Nevins was given the lead male role. He’s attractive, yes, and sings like an angel, but he’s incapable of learning lines. He changes words and word orders whenever it suits him. No attention to detail, that’s his problem. Jess says his main hobby is smoking weed, so it’s hardly surprising. If he doesn’t watch out, his beautiful voice won’t last long.
I could have insisted he be replaced—Adam would have done my bidding without question—but I made a deal with myself that night on the roof with Adam, in addition to the one I made with him. I don’t want to be a blackmailer. I don’t want to be the kind of person who has something on someone and uses it again and again, who grows accustomed to daily acts of coercion and starts to think of them as normal.
I wanted only one thing from Adam, and I got it. As far as I’m concerned, he’s now a free man. Free to cast whoever he wants as leads in the end-of-year production. He might even be right about Olly Nevins, who knows? Star quality and the ‘wow’ factor probably matter more than the odd wrong word here and there. The audience—which includes anyone who’s anyone from the world of West End musical theater—certainly seems to love Olly. From where I’m sitting, I can see the side of Cameron Mackintosh’s face, two rows from the front. It’s clear he’s impressed by Olly and by the show as a whole.
He also seems spellbound by Jess, which is gratifying. I don’t think Adam only cast her in the main female role to placate me. She’s got a magical quality about her, and he knows it. No other student at OFA can sing, act, and dance like Jess, and learn lines quickly, and get them all right. No wonder Ruby was so jealous of her. Though, actually, Ruby has been lovely to Jess ever since the problems. Even when Jess was cast as the female lead for the most important show of the year, the one every girl at OFA has been hoping to get from day one of the two-year course, Ruby congratulated her and told her she deserved it.
She’s become a different person since trying and failing to kill herself. A whole new Ruby, one I don’t dislike, let alone hate, though I’m almost ashamed to admit it. The change in Ruby’s character is why I can’t bring myself to think and feel all the things I ought to think and feel about Adam. Yes, what he did was wrong, but . . . he saw evil, and he took action in a way that hardly anyone ever does. It’s not that I believe Ruby was fully evil, in her former incarnation. I understand now that it’s more complicated than that, but still . . . it’s hard to ignore the fact that the outcome of Adam’s appalling, murderous behavior is . . . good. Great, in fact. Ruby and Jess are properly close friends now. The gang of four are tighter than ever. Last weekend they all had a barbecue at Bel’s house, and tomorrow night they’re having a sleepover at Sadie’s.
Do I care that, if Adam had aimed a little more carefully, Ruby would be dead, killed by a falling slate, and we wouldn’t now have this much-improved situation? I probably should, but try as I might, I can’t bring myself to feel negatively about Adam. He lost his daughter in the most tragic circumstances imaginable. And he was the only person in the world who took action—real action—in defense of my daughter.
Jess sings the last line of her song and the crowd spontaneously rises to its feet. First standing ovation of the night. Hopefully not the last. While the crowd claps, I tiptoe from the wings, push through the bodies, and slip back into my seat next to Dan.
He reaches for my hand, leans closer, and whispers, ‘Wasn’t Jess amazing?’
I nod, my eyes full of tears.
‘The song was amazing, too. You were right not to let me read the script or hear any of the songs before tonight. I know I tried to persuade you, but I’m glad you stood firm and said no.’
I gesture to him to be quiet. Any minute now the set change will be done and the next scene will start. Having forbidden him from reading any part of the script beforehand, I don’t want him to miss any of the musical now.
‘You realize you’re going to have to go up at the end and get your own standing ovation, as the writer?’ Dan whispers.
My stomach tightens. I’ve spent so many years dreaming about writing my own musical and having it staged, but somehow I failed to realize, idiot that I am, that if it ever happened, I’d be expected to stand on stage, bow, be in the limelight. All I want, all I’ve ever wanted, is the music that’s been living inside me all these years to get out into the world, have a life, be seen and heard by as many people as possible. Still . . . a spotlight’s always nice too, as long as you’re in it for the right reason.
That’s what I told Adam that night on the roof. That was my price for keeping the truth to myself: that he must agree to stage a musical, written by me, as the end-of-year show, the one all the producers and agents and theater stars would flock to see. Adam agreed, of course. What choice did he have? It’s a small price to pay for hanging on to his career and his freedom.
I think Elise suspects the truth, or something resembling it. She knows there’s something I didn’t tell her, for certain. Being a control freak, this meant she lost all interest in being my friend, after she saw that I didn’t necessarily go running to her with everything I knew. I honestly don’t care. I have all I need: my family, safe and happy, and now my musical on a proper stage. It doesn’t matter that it’s not a professional show; that phase of its development will follow shortly, I have no doubt.
I’ll never forget the astonishment in Adam’s voice when he rang me, having finally read the script and listened to the songs. ‘It’s actually . . . brilliant?’ he said, making it sound like a question. How can a law professor with no background in music or theater have written something this good? That was clearly the question in his mind. I don’t know the answer any more than he does, nor do I know if I’ll ever write another musical. All I know is: This is the best and most important work I’ve ever done, no matter what the Department of Law at the University of Cambridge might think.
And now I must sit here patiently and with no further expectations, and try to be grateful and happy that my show has got this far, without worrying about what Cameron Mackintosh, Nick Allott, and Sonia Friedman are all thinking about it. Will they be the ones to help me take it further than the Orla Flynn Academy? I have no way of knowing.
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A door on one side of the auditorium opens and there’s a slit of light, closing to dark a moment later. Was it someone arriving? Someone peeping in? I’m so on edge with the thrill of all this, I might even have imagined it, in my hypersensitive state.
I push it out of my mind and try to focus on the next scene.
LISA
She crouches down next to the wall, near the door. There’s nowhere for her to sit, anyway. Every seat in the auditorium is taken. They all seem to be enjoying it, and she can’t understand why. She’s never liked musicals, apart from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Most of them take themselves way too seriously, and all it does is make you realize how stupid they are.
She used to think she wanted to be an actress, but now she’s not so sure. More and more, she’s thinking that it’s not what she was put on this earth to do. She’s never felt entirely comfortable up on stage—not that she’s had much chance to try it out. Hardly any good parts have come her way over the years, and her agent has all but given up on her.
Sometimes you’ve just got to face facts. She’s not good enough, not got what it takes. End of story. Looking at the people on stage now, brimming with talent, making the audience’s eyes shine with admiration, she doesn’t feel the envy she might once have felt. This is their vocation—what they were born to do. It’s their thing, not hers. That’s fine. She can live with that.
She has other talents, as she discovered last year. A different sort of acting—that’s her sphere of genius—one that doesn’t involve a stage or a paying audience. She works better with a different kind of audience: one that doesn’t know it’s watching a performance or that anybody’s putting on an act.
Some might call it lying. Scamming, tricking. The thing is, it no longer matters to her how awful all those words sound, because they’re the words that define where her true talent lies. Once you know you’re brilliant at something, you can’t help craving the chance to do that thing again. Everybody at the Orla Flynn Academy believed that she was dangerous, creepy, compulsive liar Imogen Curwood. No one could have played that part better than her.
She sees a figure move in the shadows, up ahead: someone else without a seat, hovering near the black curtains on one side of the stage.
It’s him. Adam.
A spasm of anxiety passes through her. If he turns and sees her here . . .
No, he wouldn’t make a fuss and throw her out. He won’t want to risk drawing attention to her presence.
If he wants nothing more to do with her, she can live with that. All she needs is five minutes of his time—a brief conversation. He paid her well for her work, and no doubt believes that he now owes her nothing, but she disagrees. And even if she’s wrong, she doesn’t care. She saw him up on that roof when the tile fell, and he knows it. She could get him arrested and charged with attempted murder. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but that’s largely up to Adam.
It’s his loss, if he sends her away—in more ways than one. She’s not generally a bitter person, but she winds herself up sometimes, thinking about how he sees her: talentless, dispensable. That’s why he chose her. Yes, there was the Villiers connection, her relationship with Grace, but it wasn’t only that. In the world of actors and acting, he knew she had no status at all. He probably saw her as a desperate failure, and imagined she’d be pathetically grateful for any crumbs he threw her way.
The crowd rises to its feet and the sound of applause rings in her ears. Adam Racki disappears inside the black curtain and she follows him.
He stops. Turns. As if he sensed her there.
‘Lisa.’
He has no right to look at her like this—as if she’s some moldy, stinking piece of rubbish that’s just fallen out of his wheelie-bin. She wants to scream at him, ‘It was all your fucking idea! I only did what you asked me to do!’ Instead, she smiles. She has learned, over the years, that to let anybody know when you’re upset, or why, is to give away power you can’t afford to lose.
‘Hello, Adam. It’s going well, isn’t it? The audience seems to love it.’
‘I told you never to come back here.’ He looks scared, but doubtful. As if he’s wondering if anger might be more appropriate.
‘I know,’ she tells him. ‘I remember.’
‘Then what are you —’
‘Doing here? I was wondering if you might have any more work for me.’
‘You know I haven’t. Lisa, we had an agreement. I asked you not to contact me again, and you promised you wouldn’t. You know that.’
‘And you seem to have forgotten what else I know.’
He shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other. There’s nothing he can say to that. She’s got him cornered.
‘So you’re here to threaten me, is that it? How much? How much will it take for you to never come back?’
‘That’s not what I want. I’m not after blackmail money, I’m after work. I want you to listen to me, that’s all. Five minutes. And yes—then I’ll go and I won’t be back. Not if you’re sure that’s what you want.’
‘Haven’t I made it clear already that I’m sure?’
‘You have, but . . . the thing is, Adam, it makes no sense. I helped you. You wanted to make Ruby Donovan suffer—’
‘Keep your voice down.’
‘—and I helped you to do that. She suffered. A lot. Then, when you lost your cool up on the roof and decided you wanted to kill her—something you never ran past me as part of the plan—I saved her. I stopped you from becoming a murderer. Aren’t you glad? I mean, don’t I deserve some thanks for that?’
‘You haven’t come here for gratitude, Lisa, so don’t pretend you have.’
It’s time for her to get to the point. ‘I’ve been thinking, Adam . . . about the real Imogen Curwood. The one who drove Grace to suicide and got away with it.’
He recoils. ‘What about her?’
‘When you first told me about Ruby—everything she’d said and done, her bullying of Jess—it was clear that you wanted to punish her because Imogen was beyond your reach. Ruby was your substitute, the one you decided would have to do. I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘So?’
Lisa smiles. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know exactly where Imogen is? Her address, for example?’
He doesn’t answer. His eyes dart left and right as he tries to work out how to answer.
‘Please leave now, Lisa,’ he says in a strangled voice. ‘I’m asking you sincerely.’
‘Maybe you wouldn’t like to know,’ she says. ‘Maybe you’re a coward at heart. It’s easy to do what you did to Ruby. No one would have any reason to suspect you. If something happened to the real Imogen Curwood, on the other hand, especially while you were in America, it’d be hard to dodge the blame for that, wouldn’t it? You’d need help to pull that off, I’d imagine.’
‘Stop talking about her,’ says Adam weakly.
‘I will soon,’ Lisa Daisley says. ‘Once you’ve answered the question I came here to ask you.’ She smiles. Anyone watching will think they’re having a normal conversation. ‘How much would you pay me to take care of this for you?’ she says. ‘To go to America and find the real Imogen Curwood?’
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Table of Contents
About the Authors
Also by the Authors
Title Page
Imprint Page
Contents
1 The Music Box
KENDALL – Ruby’s mum
CAROLYN – Jess’s mum
BRONNIE – Bel’s mum
ELISE – Sadie’s mum
2 Let the Show Begin
SNAPCHAT: THE FAB FOUR
SNAPCHAT: JESS, BEL, SADIE
BRONNIE
3 On the Trail for Truth
ELISE
4 The Performance
KENDALL
5 Truth Crash
SNAPCHAT: MINGES & WHINGES
CAROLYN
6 Revelations
SNAPCHAT
: BEL, SADIE, JESS
BRONNIE
7 All the Players
TEXT MESSAGES: KENDALL AND GREG
KENDALL
8 Picture Perfect
ELISE
9 Finding Grace
CAROLYN
10 The Final Act
CAROLYN
ELISE
BRONNIE
KENDALL
CAROLYN
LISA
Endmatter page 1
The Understudy Page 30