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‘We both do,’ said Bron, reaching out and holding her hands. ‘Come on, Tati, we’re still young, I still want to do Shakespeare with you. One day …’
‘Maybe I can’t wait for one day anymore.’
She’d said it. Words that she’d never wanted to say, and when she saw how Bron slumped even more, she wished them back. ‘Look,’ she said, letting go of his hands gently, ‘I’m late, we’ve got a show to do. We’ll talk about this later.’
Giving him a swift kiss and a hug, she left him in the corridor and went to get ready, her thoughts churning. Susan’s offer was tempting, but was it the right thing to do?
As usual, it was squashed in the girls’ dressing room. Bron didn’t have this problem in his single dressing room, thought Tatiana bitterly as she found her dressing table in the corner. Naturally the male star of the show couldn’t slum it like she did. She was so mixed up. She loved Bron, she really did, but she hated this, and it wasn’t fair. Someone had laughingly written ‘Star’ in lipstick on her mirror. Ha, bloody ha. The joke was certainly on her, she thought sourly as she sat herself down, and with the practice of an old hand started to apply her stage make-up.
The room was hot and crowded, and full of the noise of women’s chatter. Like so many cheeping hens, Tatiana thought bitchily. She was more of a man’s woman. Women and their idle talk bored her. Which didn’t make for popularity among her peer group, but Tatiana didn’t really care. This batch of hens was even duller than most, so she didn’t feel she was missing out. They were the backstage chorus dancing to Freddie Puck’s tune, as all of them were on this Illusions tour. As she was. As Bron was.
She sighed and looked at herself in the mirror. Pushing twenty-five and was this all there was to offer? She thought again about the deal on the table, and felt her stomach churn. It was all very well for Bron to tell her to be patient, that Freddie’s incessant talks with production companies about a TV series of Illusions would eventually come to fruition, but she couldn’t see it herself.
Tatiana scrutinised her face. Still pretty, she judged – pretty enough to do what she had to do in Bron’s show, at any rate. But for how long? This was a cruel business for a woman. Twenty-five wasn’t far from thirty. Then what would happen to her? When she and Bron had started out, he’d promised her an equal part in the act; equal shares in the profits, and then, when they could afford it, their own theatre company, Shakespeare, proper acting. So how come it was still her looking decorative and pretty, Bron taking all the credit, the gasps and plaudits from the crowd, as he performed yet another incredible trick? If she hadn’t been so damned in thrall to Bron …
They’d met as extras in rep, doing Shakespeare in dreary towns to uninterested punters. It had been a far cry from her drama school ambition to play Juliet at Stratford, and the only bright spot had been Bron, with his lean handsome look and sardonic manner. They had laughed their way through most of the misery of the tour, and he’d taught her card tricks and outlined his twin obsessions of magic and owning his own theatre company. When, after the tour was over, he rang her to say he and his friend Freddie had got a gig doing a magic show in Brighton, it had seemed like a lifeline. Regular money, regular work. After months of scrabbling to pay the rent, it was an easy option. It had always been meant to be temporary – Bron was never going to give up on his theatre plans, but as time went on, they seemed to recede into the distance. And now Tati often found herself wondering if he still wanted it as much as he said he did.
Tatiana formed a cupid’s bow, and painted her lips bright red in a fury. With her green and blue sparkly eye shadow, over-blushed cheeks, and the new haircut (which despite her best efforts didn’t look anything like the photo Julie had shown her), she looked like a painted doll. Which is all she was. Being pretty and decorative was all she was good for. Unless …
Unless she took the offer. She hadn’t been quite straight with Bron. It wasn’t just any old soap: she’d been offered the leading role in a new soap opera the Beeb had just commissioned. Susan thought she should; couldn’t understand her hesitation. ‘You don’t want to be doing this forever do you?’ she’d said with uncharacteristic honesty. Tatiana knew she was right. So why was she still hesitating? Misguided loyalty to Bron was what Susan had called it. But, Bron and her … a future without him was unthinkable, even after what had happened. She pulled on her spandex bodysuit, wincing as she realised how tight it was getting. She still hadn’t managed to shed all her excess weight. Even Bron had noticed and Freddie had made sarky comments too. All the time she was getting older and fatter and there were any amount of silly hens in this hen coop desperate to take her place.
So why don’t you let them?
As Tatiana stood waiting in the wings for the fanfare which heralded her arrival on stage, the thought came to her more strongly than ever. As she let Bron tie her up, throw knives at her, try to cut her in two, and pull hankies out of her ear, while she span and danced like a pretty doll around him, with the same fixed grin on her face, she felt her strongest urge yet to leave. What was there for her here now? She and Bron were growing apart, she could feel it. She knew Bron was hurting too, but what had happened was forming an insurmountable barrier between them. And Freddie was too much of an influence not to suggest she was replaced when she got too fat, too wrinkly, too old.
At the climax of Bron’s act, he produced doves out of a hat, which flew onto Tatiana. As she paraded round the stage (hating what she did with a passion) the bird that had landed on her head shat on her.
In that instant her decision was made. Susan was right. She could do much better than this.
‘Sorry babes, about Henrietta,’ Bron said as they came off the stage. Bron had the absurd habit of naming all his birds. ‘Hope your new hairdo can stand it.’ He laughed, and Freddie, who was standing with him, laughed too. Tati was enraged, it was as if their earlier conversation had never taken place.
‘My hair, yes,’ said Tatiana. ‘Me, no.’
‘Sorry?’ Bron looked confused.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘It’s the last straw. Tomorrow I sign up for Sail for the Sun. I’m going to be on the TV.’
‘What about the act?’ said Bron, aghast.
‘What about it?’ said Tatiana. ‘You don’t need me. You just need a pretty face. Well Auberon Fanshawe, I’m tired of being your Debbie McGee. I’m better than that.’
With that, she turned and left the theatre, without even taking her make-up off.
She’d done it. She was free. And a shining future beckoned.
Halloween (#udcdfecaf-9b5a-56d5-8ce3-24b93f5e2990)
‘Combining your moving-in party with a Halloween one was a brilliant idea,’ declared Diana. She looked gorgeous as ever, in a little black dress which accentuated her curves, her auburn hair piled high on her head, with some fetching curls escaping, as she bustled round Josie’s kitchen. From the lounge – which they’d spent the afternoon decorating with wispy bits of cobweb, spiders dangling from the ceiling, flashing skull-shaped lights and pumpkin-shaped candles – came a loud set of expletives, as Harry tried to plug in various bits of electrical equipment to make a sound system any nightclub would have been proud of, but which Josie was somewhat doubtful was needed in a small London flat on a Saturday night.
‘I seem to remember it was more your idea,’ laughed Josie, as she got out plastic cups and put them on the kitchen drainer with the copious amounts of wine and beer that Harry had cheerily brought back from Sainsburys. ‘Josie, it’s so fab that you and Harry are moving in together, why don’t you have a party?’ she mimicked. ‘Josie, Halloween’s coming up, you can combine them, wouldn’t that be amazing!’
‘Well if I left it up to you, you’d have just snuck in here like a pair of sneak thieves, as if you were embarrassed about the whole thing, rather than celebrating the wonderfulness of you two becoming a proper partnership,’ declared Diana. ‘Honestly, I don’t know what you’d do without me.’
‘Er, get on with my life without being bossed about?’ said Josie, and ducked as Diana chucked some peanuts in her direction.
‘I can only hope Harry’s more domesticated than you are,’ said Diana. ‘I don’t know how you’ll manage to keep this place clean without my help.’
Until recently Diana had been renting Josie’s spare room, but when it became clear that Harry was becoming a permanent fixture, she’d tactfully moved out to live with friends down the road. ‘Three is definitely a crowd,’ she’d said, ‘and I don’t fancy being a gooseberry to you two lovebirds.’
‘I miss this,’ said Josie, ‘are you sure you’re okay about leaving?’
Di had been incredibly positive and supportive since Josie had first broached the awkward subject of Harry moving in, but Josie knew how good she was at covering up her emotions. Di didn’t have a huge social network, didn’t get on immensely well with her family, and for all her playing the ‘I love being single’ card, Josie had the sneaking suspicion that she was secretly yearning to settle down herself.
‘Of course I am,’ said Diana, ‘I mean, it is bloody annoying being best friends with someone as pretty, rich and successful as you are, who’s managed to nab a gorgeous man to boot, but I’ll survive.’
‘Oh, Diana, now I feel terrible,’ said Josie, giving her friend a hug.
‘It was a joke, Josie,’ said Diana affectionately. ‘You are so gullible.’
‘Still,’ said Josie wistfully, ‘it’s not going to be the same now, is it?’
Josie had met Di five years earlier, through a mutual friend, Carrie, who worked with Josie and had been to school with Di. They both quickly decided they didn’t like Carrie as much as they did each other. They’d started meeting once a week for drinks, and soon it had turned into regular weekends on the pull – Diana’s confidence taking Josie places she would never have been alone. Without Diana pushing her, Josie doubted she would have followed up Harry’s tentative calls when they’d first met up again. It was no good, happy as she was, Josie was going to miss sparky, lively Diana, who called a spade a spade and always let you know when you were in the wrong, but was also an incredibly loyal, fun friend.
‘No, it won’t,’ said Diana, ‘but it will be different. And that’s good too.’
She was being so positive about it, Josie hoped she wasn’t protesting too much.
‘And you really don’t mind?’
‘Don’t be daft, of course I don’t,’ said Diana, ‘I’m happy for you. You and Harry are made for each other. Now what else do we need to do? How’s the punch?’
Josie looked at the punch into which Harry had cheerfully flung a bottle of vodka, copious amounts of red wine, and not nearly enough orange juice, in Josie’s opinion. It seemed to be a bit lacking in the fruit department, and they’d run out of oranges. ‘What do you think about this punch? Does it need more fruit?’
‘Haven’t you got any more apples?’ said Diana. ‘It’s Halloween, you have to have apples. It’s the law.’
‘I think I might still have some left in the cupboard,’ said Josie.
She rummaged around, and then produced a couple of rather wrinkled-looking apples.
‘Great,’ said Diana, ‘here, let me peel them.’
‘Why?’ said Josie.
‘Because …’ said Diana. ‘It’s Halloween and you need to see the name of the man you’re going to marry … which will begin with H, obviously.’
Despite her straight talking and often cynical nature, Diana was extremely superstitious, always walking round a ladder, and freaking out if a black cat strolled across her path.
She grabbed one of the apples from Josie and peeled it with a flourish.
‘Now,’ she instructed, ‘you have to fling it over your shoulder, and it should fall in the shape of the letter that begins the name of your future husband.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Josie.
‘Famous Halloween tradition, young maids did it all the time in olden days, don’t you know anything?’ Diana was a force to be reckoned with so, feeling incredibly foolish, Josie threw the apple peel over her shoulder. It landed with a plop on the floor, and despite herself Josie turned round to see what the result was.
‘Knew it was stupid,’ she said, ‘look, it’s formed the letter A. I don’t know anyone whose name begins with A, apart from Harry’s mate Ant, and I’m hardly going to marry him.’
‘Oh,’ said Diana, looking a bit despondent. ‘I can’t believe it hasn’t worked.’
‘Come on, Di, you can’t believe all that mumbo jumbo,’ said Josie, laughing. She could never get over how gullible Di could be.
‘Well, you never know, Halloween is a strange time of year,’ said Diana. ‘I just think there are things out there we know nothing about.’
‘Go on then, you have a go,’ said Josie indulgently.
Diana peeled the other apple and with a great sense of drama, slowly threw it behind her shoulder. This time the apple peel landed with a more definite thud, and split into three pieces which, if you were being very imaginative, may just have formed the letter H.
‘Well that’s not right, either,’ said Diana, ‘the only H I know is Harry.’
‘There you go,’ said Josie, ‘I knew it was daft. Besides, I’m not marrying Harry just yet. Without your help I’d never have persuaded him to move in here. I might just get him convinced about marrying me in the next decade.’
‘Get me convinced of what?’ Harry came into the kitchen holding a pair of leads and looking a bit bemused. Josie’s heart did the little leap it always did when she saw him. Lovely dependable Harry, with his brilliant blue eyes, curly black hair and cute smile. It made her feel warm all over thinking they were now a proper item again. They had first met at university, although Josie might never have paid much attention to the quiet studious boy on her course if he hadn’t tagged along on a group weekend away at her parents’ home in Cornwall. When he was the only person who was prepared to go and watch Shakespeare with her on a rainy summer’s night at the local open air theatre she knew he was special. And for a while there it looked like they might go the distance, then time and space and work intervened and somehow they lost touch. It still seemed such luck not only to have met Harry again at Amy’s wedding, but for him to have still remembered, and (apparently) thought about her, just as she’d thought about him over the years. In one way their relationship had been a whirlwind, they’d only been ‘together’ properly for a few months, but in other ways it felt like she was coming home. Harry in her mind had always been the one who got away.
‘I think I’m going to have to head out to B&Q to find another lead,’ he said, ‘there’s a connection I’m missing.’
‘Nothing,’ said Josie, digging Diana in the ribs and glaring at her to stop her spilling the beans. But as usual it did no good.
‘Josie’s been doing an old Halloween trick of seeing the name of the man she’ll marry,’ said Diana. ‘She threw a piece of apple peel over her shoulder, and look, it fell down in the shape of the letter H. I wonder what that could mean?’
Josie felt herself blush deeply. Marriage was something she wanted with Harry, of course it was, but given how fast they’d moved so far, she thought marriage might be rushing things a bit. She wanted him to ask her in his own way, at the right time.
Harry peered at the floor, ‘Are you sure that’s an H?’ he said. ‘What about that one?’
‘Oh, that was my turn,’ lied Diana glibly. ‘I got an A.’
‘Ah, shame Ant’s still in Oz, otherwise I’d introduce you,’ said Harry with a grin.
‘Ant? You want to inflict Ant on my best friend?’ said Josie as she swept the peel away. ‘It’s all foolish nonsense anyway. As if an apple peel can tell you who you’re going to marry.’
‘As if indeed,’ said Harry, but he looked thoughtful as he picked up the car keys and left the room.
‘There, he’s going to ask you now,’ Diana teased her, ‘sure as eggs is eggs. Did you see the look on his face?’
‘Don’t you ever stop interfering?’ said Josie, blushing. ‘He’ll ask me if and when he’s good and ready.’
‘Well, there’s no harm in pushing him along a bit,’ said Diana. ‘You know you two are made for each other. You just need a little help from Cupid’s arrow, that’s all.’
‘What was all that about?’ Harry muttered to himself as he got in the car and drove the short distance to B&Q. One of the most restful things about being with Josie was that she had never ever mentioned the ‘M’ word. Not that Harry was against the idea, but things had already moved faster then he’d anticipated, and he wasn’t in a hurry to get married. Indeed, his best friend, Ant, had laughed like a drain when he found out that Harry was even contemplating moving in with Josie.
‘You are joking?’ he’d said over the phone, when Harry had tracked him down to a bar in Australia to tell him the good news. ‘Before you know it, you’ll have his ‘n’ hers slippers and she’ll be walking you down the aisle. And then it will be only a matter of time before she starts mentioning babies, and your life will effectively be over. Don’t do it, mate. You’ll really live to regret it.’
Knowing that he really wouldn’t regret it, or at least regret taking the first step of sharing a home with Josie, allowed Harry to pass off Ant’s teasing in a good-humoured fashion. ‘You’re only saying that because you’re a jealous saddo who doesn’t have a clue how to attract, let alone keep a beautiful woman,’ he joshed back. ‘Women, beware, Ant’s here.’
Ant had always had plenty of women, but no one serious, apart from one mysterious relationship after uni, which he rarely mentioned, but had clearly left a scar.
‘Your funeral, mate,’ said Ant. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
Ant, who was currently taking the gap year he’d been threatening ever since before he and Harry had been students, had sent him a very rude Facebook message when he found out that Harry actually had gone the whole hog and was going ‘all domesticated’, as he put it.
Harry didn’t happen to think Ant was right. Sure, when they were young guns straight out of college there had been a certain cachet in seeing who got the most women – getting any women at all had been Harry’s main aim when he’d arrived at university, in the autumn of the millennium – but once Harry met Josie again at a mutual friend’s wedding, nights on the pull had definitely lost their charm. It hadn’t taken long for Harry to realise he’d fallen swiftly, deeply, irrevocably in love. He and Josie had got together at the end of university, and he’d always regretted letting her get away. He’d never been quite sure how it had happened, but he and Josie had been together such a briefly short time, and once they went to work – him to a small local newspaper in Newcastle, her to be a marketing assistant in a factory in Swindon – things had fizzled out. He had always thought he should have fought harder to keep her. So now they had found each other again, nothing was going to keep them apart. However much Ant might bitch about it, no amount of teasing would change his mind.
But … marriage? Harry thought about it as he scanned the electrical shelves in B&Q for the right scart lead, wishing, not for the first time, that manufacturers would just make a universal lead which adapted to fit every bit of electronic equipment it seemed necessary for a modern man to have in his possession. Were he and Josie ready for that? He had to admit to a certain amount of relief and pleasure when they’d made the decision to move in together. No longer the need to be out there in the savage forest of dating; time to hang up his spurs, sit by the fire, and sip wine with his one true love. Simples, as the meerkats would say, but true.
Eventually buying two leads, certain that one of them would fit, Harry made his way back home, where he found Josie and Diana already giggly, having tried out his punch to ‘see that it was strong enough’, according to Diana, although Josie was worried it had too much vodka. ‘Nonsense!’ said Diana, ‘you can never have too much vodka!’ and promptly poured the remaining half of the bottle Harry had resisted pouring in before. Diana was a whirlwind. One he quite liked, he thought, but so different from Josie, Harry sometimes wondered how they could be friends. She was vivacious, lively, pretty and incredibly flirty: like a female version of Ant, a good-time girl out on the pull. She often gave off a tough vibe, but underneath it all Harry suspected she hid a vulnerability she wasn’t prepared to let most people see. And she liked him and seemed genuinely happy for them both. Harry had a huge soft spot for her.
Josie poured some more orange juice into the punch, while Diana answered the door to their first guests. Once Harry had sorted out the music, the next few hours went by in a blur of congratulations, drinking and laughter. By midnight, Harry was feeling distinctly the worse for wear, and sitting happily ensconced on the sofa, watching Josie dance to the dulcet tones of Lady Gaga. He could sit and watch her dance for hours, she moved so gracefully, it was mesmerising. He was so lucky to have her. Josie was so beautiful, and kind, and wonderful. And she was his … sometimes he couldn’t quite believe it.
Maybe it was time to make things more permanent between them.
Someone had put something slower on, and a few of their friends were cosying up together – Diana, he noticed with amusement, was smooching with Josie’s boss – ‘Come on, lover boy,’ Josie came swaying towards him, as drunk, he realised, as he was, ‘time to dance.’
‘Always time to dance with you,’ he smiled, and pulled her close. She leant against his shoulder, and he felt her softness, and smelt her perfume. He was suddenly overcome with a dizzying sense of what could only be described as joy. He wanted to hold her and keep her and never let her go. ‘You are so perfect,’ he said, kissing her softly on the lips, ‘how did I get this lucky?’
Josie blushed, and said, ‘I’m the lucky one,’ as she kissed him back, and he was overcome with a happiness he could never remember feeling before. With her small trim figure, her gorgeous fair pre-Raphaelite curls, and her stunning blue eyes, Josie was perfect in every way. She was kind, sweet, funny, loyal and he already knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. So why not make it formal? What was wrong with marriage, after all? A perfectly sensible institution which had been round for centuries.
‘Josie,’ he said, feeling his heart hammering with happiness, ‘will you marry me?’
‘Oh my God, Oh my God!’ An overexcited and slightly pissed Josie dragged Diana away from a rather interesting situation with Josie’s to-die-for good-looking boss, Philip (trust Josie to nab a lovely guy and have a good-looking boss) into the kitchen. ‘It worked, I can’t believe it, but it worked.’
‘What worked?’ Josie wasn’t the only one who’d drunk too much, Diana realised, as the walls came crashing in on her suddenly. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Your Halloween thing,’ said Josie, ‘you know, the apple peel.’
Diana dragged herself away from the delicious prospect of a night in a penthouse with Philip, to focus on a faint memory of the early evening. ‘But you got an A!’
‘No I didn’t,’ said Josie, ‘I got an H, remember? Ta-da!’
She waved her ring finger in front of Diana’s bleary eyes. There was a platinum-looking ring on it.
‘What? He didn’t?’
‘Yup, Harry just proposed!’ said Josie triumphantly. ‘Of course we need to get a proper ring, but this will do for now.’
On closer inspection, Diana realised Josie was wearing the ring pull from a Coke can on her finger.
‘That’s, that’s – words fail me,’ Diana suddenly felt the urgent need to sit down, and slumped against the wall and slid down it. She wanted to say something more effusive, but somehow the words wouldn’t come.
‘I know,’ said Josie, sliding down to join her, ‘and it’s all down to you. You are going to be my bridesmaid, aren’t you?’
