‘Sure.’
He smiles shyly. ‘You’re doing really well. I’m impressed. You’re hard to freak out. I guess your psychic auntie is really doing you a favour now.’
She slumps into a chair and shuts her eyes. Her mind is a whirl of faces and names and her face aches from holding it in a pleasant, neutral expression no matter what crazy thing Zach has just said, no matter who has just introduced themselves with an instantly forgettable name. No wonder no one’s ever heard of this show, no wonder Belinda was cagey during her interview, no wonder the pay is double the starting salary for a lighting technician. Fairies and magic trains and crows who can see into your soul. What would Mum and Auntie Doreen make of this?
On stage, Cecile shouts, ‘Have a moment to compose yourselves then we’ll run it one more time.’ There is a murmur of relief and a patter of light footsteps.
She opens her eyes to find a young man right beside her, drinking from a water bottle set on the props table. A dancer, lithe and hairless, dressed in a maroon leotard thing and some black fleecy trousers that don’t leave much to the imagination. The remnants of acne spot his forehead, a prominent Adam’s apple bobs as he gulps at a bottle ofwater and damp locks of mousey blond hair cling to his flushed neck. She offers a tentative smile and he smiles back with something like relief.
‘Are you the new LX assistant?’
She nods. He hesitates, then holds out a hand for her to shake, which she does though it seems too formal, like they’re playing at being grown up.
‘I’m Luke. I was the newest one before you.’
‘Nice to meet you. I’m Lara.’
So here’s the poor bugger who’s replaced the poker-playing ballet prodigy no one will talk about. He doesn’t look like he’s stepping up to the job. He looks pale and cowed. There’s something tender about him, something a little too raw that makes you want to look away.
‘Do you like it here?’ she says. ‘I feel like people are really kind and friendly.’
Immediately she sees that she’s said the wrong thing. His face crumples, and he has a long glug of his water to hide some kind of disappointment.
‘I wouldn’t say Cecile is exactly friendly.’ he says, his voice a little lowered. ‘Everyone else knows the show inside out, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’Too kind, Lara thinks.Too nice. Didn’t anyone ever tell him that the human world chews you up and spits you out if you’re too good, let alone the fairy world? Lara baulks a little at the thought. Should she be, like, preparing to be snatched? Should she have a plan? Should she be learning what she can about the fairy creatures, just in case? Is Zach going to make thatuncomfortable, squirmy face if she asks him this question?
On stage Cecile shouts, ‘Alors, we go back to the hunting dance one more time and then I will release myself from this torture for today.’
Luke screws his eyes shut, lifts his chin and peels the fleecy trousers off his legs. ‘That’s me. Wish me luck.’
He appears on stage and Cecile’s face darkens at the sight of him. Poor boy. Lara watches as the ghost of a mean-looking old lady stands in the wings and glares at Luke with a scowl on her face. Hounded by the living and the dead. Maybe that’s why he looks like a cringing dog waiting for someone to kick him. Maybe without that old woman’s spirit following him around he would be able to flourish. She could help him, perhaps, offer to release him from whoever she is – a grandmother, probably. That would be kind. A good deed. A way to start off here on the right foot.
But here’s the thing, it’s never easy to tell what the right foot is when you’re dealing with the dead. She started off getting it wrong when she was only a child – insistently telling her year three teacher that a baby wanted her to cuddle him, that he was crying for her, that he was right there on her desk, couldn’t she hear? – and then she blacked out on the playground after a long, hot lunchtime of dodging the ghosts her school friends lugged around. Mum, after the teachers called her in for a meeting after school:Doreen, get down here, you need to teach the kid to keep her bloody mouth shut.
At first, Mum and Doreen had been thrilled. They’dgone hell for leather on the multi-generational medium angle, making posters advertising the psychic child prodigy, dressing her up in frilly dresses for the double-price seances but Lara had pretended the ability left her on the morning she found a rust-coloured stain on her bedsheets. That was the sort of thing Doreen, Nana and Mum went in for so they believed her.
It had been her who had persuaded Granddad to stop knocking the teapot over and hurling pictures off the wall. She’d sat in the airing cupboard of the new house for hours, colouring in and chatting to him. After he’d disappeared gracefully into the boiler pipes she realised that it wasn’t so simple, this ancient dance between the living and the dead.
Now the spirits are like birds in the sky, almost always harmless and hardly ever out to get her. Or anyone else. She’s learned the dead don’t always have a reason to hang around. Sometimes they just linger and there’s nothing you can do about them. That’s why she doesn’t offer to intercede unless she is a hundred per cent sure there is something she can do, and that something will be welcome. It was all right for Auntie Doreen, because when someone’s paid a hundred quid to come to a seance you can reasonably expect that they’re all right about getting messages from their husband, mother, friend, son.
But what is Lara going to do here onThe Apple and the Pearl, a show so surprisingly filled with ghosts she is struggling to pay attention to the living rather than the shadows they’re carting around? What might she do aboutthe little blond-headed boy sitting cross-legged next to Cecile, for instance; or the woman wearing a cape of goose feathers standing next to Belinda; or that old lady who right now is thumping her cane at Luke’s feet in time to the music?
A shadow falls over her and she opens her eyes. A man is standing over her, another crew member by the look of his black jeans and black sweatshirt. He’s balding, with a few wisps of straw-coloured hair combed over the top of his head, and his jowly cheeks are covered in grey stubble. Behind him, stretching the whole depth of the stage, is a long line of animals – cats and foxes and toads and stoats.
‘Lara, isn’t it?’ She nods. She’d like to stand so she doesn’t have to look up at him but he’s too close to her. ‘I’m Derek the follow spot.’
‘Nice to meet you.’ He doesn’t hold out his hand and she’s glad.
Derek giggles, a strangely girlish sound for a balding man with a paunch. ‘What’s your boyfriend’s name?’
She glances at the parade of animal souls behind him and when she meets his eyes again she sees his expression has tightened in glee. Who or what is this man? ‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’
‘Girlfriend?’
Lara presses her lips together and shakes her head. Will she get in trouble if she tells his man and his shadowy zoo to fuck off on her very first day? Maybe this is a test, and if she takes a hard line with this creep today then he’ll leaveher alone. She glances over Derek’s shoulder to the door to the corridor. Where is Zach?
Derek smiles. ‘Our Zachary will be pleased. Don’t you go breaking his heart now. We don’t need any more miserable men here onThe Apple and the Pearl.’
Lara frowns. She’s not sure what he’s talking about but she doesn’t want to ask him, she wants him to go away. She looks back at the stage where Cecile is furiously counting the music over the pianist and poor Luke is pink with embarrassment, but Derek crouches so that his face is right next to hers.
