leave.
‘What was the second thing?’ I ask before he goes.
He pivots on his heel and fixes me with another smile, sucking on the arm of his plastic glasses.
‘Are the pillows real?’ His eyes jump down to my chest and he moves his glance from one to the other as if a tennis match is being conducted across my cleavage.
‘They’re all mine,’ I say with a smile.
‘Good for you. Lady luck. No jogging, though, Make-up, it could be carnage. Gerry’s then. Gavin! I’ll be back in ten, I need to do a thing.’
He pushes on his glasses and walks towards the front of house, disappearing quickly through a set of swing doors.
Gavin and I stand in silence and watch him go. I feel exhausted. Something crashes loudly on the stage behind us.
‘Maybe he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings,’ Gavin says while still staring at the swing doors.
‘Tristan?’ The pillow talk could have offended less of a girl than me. I’m used to it, however, from Ben.
‘No, your bloke. This Ben.’
‘And just drifting on without any kind of emotional investment isn’t hurting my feelings?’ I ask, still staring at the swing doors myself.
‘I don’t see a gun to your head …’ Gavin turns to me as if breaking out of a trance. I snap myself out of it as well. I wonder whether Tristan has opium sewn into his suit. He has left us both dazed and a little cloudy.
‘But …’ I shake my head to clear it, ‘but I love him, Gavin … it’s so hard …’
‘Nothing is that hard really … look at the facts …’ He turns and walks towards the stage. I follow.
‘Okay,’ I count on my fingers, ‘he doesn’t say he loves me. He doesn’t want to have sex with me. He doesn’t say nice things to me, even when I ask him to …’
‘Has he ever said anything nice to you?’
‘He said I was “electrifying” once …’
‘Electrifying? What does that mean?’ Gavin looks nonplussed.
‘I know. Pretty much nothing. It made me sound like a waltzer at a fun fair …’
‘Or a broken hair-dryer,’ Gavin offers as we walk through a small door at the side of the stage.
‘Thanks, Gavin, thanks very much.’
‘Is he seventy-five? Or a miner?’ he asks.
‘No … He’s thirty-three and he runs a branch of Dixons … Are there any miners left? You know, after Thatcher?’
‘Not really. You should leave him.’ He says this with some certainty, and I wonder how he can be so sure.
‘But why doesn’t he leave me, Gavin, if he wants to? I love him! If he doesn’t want to be with me, why is he still with me?’
We reach a small door backstage that has been freshly painted lilac. A sign that reads ‘Do NOT disturb’ swings from the doorknob, as well as what looks like a lavender sachet, the type they sell at school fetes, that somebody’s granny made at her club. Gavin turns the knob as he says, ‘Because he’s weak.’
I feel hugely disloyal. I hate that Gavin has just said that. He doesn’t even know Ben. I have painted this picture, and it is obviously an awful one.
‘I don’t know, Gavin, I don’t think that’s fair. He’s come from a really hard place, he left his wife for me, and …’
I start to defend him, but Gavin fixes me with a stare, from way up high. Maybe that is it – he’s weak. I hadn’t thought of that.
‘Scarlet. He’s weak. Most men are.’
‘But I thought that men were supposed to be the strong ones?’ I say, quietly confused.
‘They are … This is it.’ Gavin shrugs at the little room and it feels like the room shrugs back.
‘We might need you to make-up some of the other leads. Our Cast Make-up, Greta, is about eighty. She’s always got a hipflask full of Drambuie on the go. We can’t let her do eyeliner. We haven’t got enough insurance.’
‘Fine.’ I dump my make-up box on a table covered in flowers and cards, in front of a long, thin, badly lit mirror. ‘As long as Dolly’s okay with me doing it I’m happy to.’
‘It’s cool, you could get here at midday every day and still have time to do the two other principals before she turns up.’
‘Anybody I know?’ I unclip the three locks on my carrier. It’s like a portable Fort Knox, but the prospect of it falling open on the tube and thousands of pounds’ worth of make-up tumbling out to be crushed under loafers and court shoes is unthinkable.
Gavin passes me a polystyrene cup of instant coffee that has appeared like magic. ‘Arabella Jones and Tom Harvey-Saint,’ he says as I take a sip.
I spit it back out all over Gavin’s huge trainers.
‘Didn’t realise he was in it, did you?’ Gavin smirks at me.
‘No … I didn’t realise he was in it.’ The blood rushes from my legs to my head and I lean back against the table urgently.
‘Fancy him, do you?’ Gavin asks, but as if he is reading court notes back to a jury.
I gulp but don’t answer.
‘Watch out Ben,’ he whistles, and edges towards the door.
The side of the room that isn’t the table and mirror and flowers and cards is cushions and more flowers, a large gold chair with deep red velvet backing, and a tall lamp with a fuchsia scarf thrown over it to soften the light. It’s a tiny space crammed with decoration, an old room dressed up to the nines.
A noisy fan blows hot air out in the corner, but it seems fairly warm anyway.
‘Do we really need that?’ I ask Gavin, nodding at the heater.
‘Yep. The pipes are rubbish and she likes it to be twenty-four degrees.’
‘The lighting in here is terrible,’ I say, spinning around, trying to find another plug socket.
‘She won’t have it any brighter either, and when you meet her you’ll see why,’ he says. ‘Do you need anything before I go?’
‘Where’s the kitchen?’
‘Down the hall, second turn on the left.’
‘Where’s the bathroom?’
‘Hers is opposite, you can use that if you’re discreet. Anything else?’
I
