Another waft of coffee makes her heave. ‘Are you drinking that black?’ Milly asks. ‘At this time of the day?’
Alina makes a face. ‘Something wrong with the milk again. Tastes fucking awful.’
Milly turns back to the sewing machine, nausea tinged with panic. When did it start, these complaints about soured milk? She thinks back to what she read online a few days ago when they last had signal:folklore about changelings spoiling milk and curdling butter is consistent between cultures.
‘Mackie’s hosting in the Grub tonight, did you see?’ Alina continues. ‘It’s his pledge day. And there’s someone on probation too, blonde LX girl.’
Milly makes a non-committal noise as she sips her water but inside her chest something folds in upon itself. Therewill be drinking until long after the midnight bells, a long night of lager-swilling, whisky-gulping drunkenness and Danny will be there until the end with the rest of them. She won’t get a chance to tell him tonight and tomorrow he’ll be too hungover. It’ll have to be the day after. But it doesn’t really matter. She can wait. She’s planning to take some secrets to her grave: she can carry this for forty-eight more hours.
‘Great.’ Milly says. ‘Hope the new girl pledges, we could do with a bit less testosterone around.’
Alina snorts as she drains the dregs of her coffee. ‘Won’t change anything round here. One more woman on the crew isn’t going to make your man and the rest of them magically teetotal.’ Alina presses the pedal bin with her foot and dumps the empty coffee cup inside. ‘She may, however, have a good effect on Zach, who seems to be half in love with her already.’
Milly shrugs. ‘As long as he doesn’t do a Michael when she rejects him.’
Danny won’t drink so much in their new life, she knows it. The others won’t be there to goad him on, the booze won’t be subsidised, they’ll spend evenings when he’s not working curled up in front of the telly or chatting about this and that. She lets her lips part and tries to breathe through her mouth. Easily led, is Danny. She’ll have to make sure it’s her who leads him, when they’re back out in the world.
Alina takes off her coat and hangs it on the peg next to the door. She bends forwards, shakes her long black hairinto a ponytail and gathers it with one of the hairbands she keeps on her wrists.
‘Guys or girls?’ Alina asks, pointing at the two waiting washing baskets.
‘Girls,’ Milly says immediately, thinking of the stink of cheap aftershave, feet and unwashed dancewear in the men’s dressing room, never freshened, no matter how many times Alina throws the windows open, no matter where the Grit sets itself up.
‘White Princess costume looks good, by the way.’ Alina says as she plucks one of the casting sheets from the back of the door and clamps it between her teeth. Milly follows her with the other sheet of paper balanced on the stack of underwear in the washing basket. She’s surprised to find tears prickling at the back of her eyes. She is so pathetically grateful to Alina for saying exactly what she needs to hear. No one else will notice where she’s taken care not to sew any sequins or gems around the bodice so the dancer can be partnered easily about her waist, no one else will see how precisely she’s matched the pattern on the seams of the tulle, no one else could appreciate how she’s cut the hem at the most flattering point of the leg. They’d only sniff accusingly if she got it wrong. Not that she does this job for thanks or applause, you’d be waiting a long time if you were. The show goes on, because it’s the most important thing, the only important thing. It’s like motherhood, she thinks as she trudges down the stairs to the women’s dressing room. You pour your heart and soul into making a body foranother to inhabit, and if you do it right you’ll always be invisible. A silent wind carrying your child over mountains and oceans, a weightless shield against every storm.
Before she opens the door to the dressing room she stops, puts the washing basket down and wipes her eyes.Pull yourself together,she tells herself sternly.And get on with your job.She stands up and feels sick. She puts a hand on the doorknob and feels sick. She tightens her grip on the plastic rim of the basket and swallows. The show must go on.
***
Six o’ clock, and the technicians fill every booth of the dining car, scraping the last smears of Gino’s lasagne onto their forks and into their mouths. Lara sits with Zach and Mackie, eating lasagne with one hand while the other is paging through the black ringbinder she’s been carrying around all day.
‘Can I just ask about this bit here in the contract’ – she flips through the binder on her lap – ‘where it says about a forfeit if I break my pledge?’
Mackie sighs. ‘Breaking your pledge incurs a penalty. It’s decided by the Crow, with Belinda fighting your corner. It’s a bugger, but though Belinda and the unions have been busting a gut over the years, you just can’t know what your forfeit will be until it’s asked. It could be simple like a bit of your stuff. Hairbrush or pair of shoes or something. Could be a limb or seven years’ service.’
Lara looks down at the contract in her lap. Zach seesa quick flash of fear cross her face like lightning, just like anyone he’s ever seen sitting with a contract in their lap.A limb?he can hear the girl thinking.Is he fucking joking?
A few tables away, Derek finishes his meal, belches, and passes by Kavi on his way to the counter. He slaps him on the back and says in a stage whisper so loud the entire crew can hear him, ‘You wanna be quick mate if you’re to have a chance with the new girl. Seems like Zach is mooning after her too.’
Kavi reddens as he gets up from the table, Zach chokes on a piece of roasted pepper and Charlie says firmly, ‘See you up in the Grit, Derek.’
Danny stands before Derek has a chance to turn to him, still chewing his pasta, and returns his tray to Gino. He follows Kavi out of the dining car and jumps down beside him onto the dark earth.
A shriek in the stillness, followed by an answering howl.
Kavi starts, stumbles into him. ‘What was that?’
‘An owl, mate.’ Danny kindly, firmly, rights him, gives him a pat on the shoulder. ‘Get your torch out and let’s get up to the Grit. Quick, before Derek catches us.’
***
Ten past six, and the graveyard that lies between the Grub and the Grit is fully dark, the thick cloud obscuring any light from moon or stars. Belinda stands at the open window of her office, elbows on the sill, staring out over the black graves towards the Grub. An updated list ofthings to do – the new LX girl’s contract, check October’s payroll, write out a notice for the next day off, get a plumber for that dodgy shower in the Grub – runs through her mind but she stays still, breathing deeply of the loam-rot smell wafting into the Grit. Winter is her favourite season onThe Apple and the Pearl. Safer, statistically speaking, and easier to manage. The Otherworld contracts to a cosy radius around the theatre and the train; the cast, crew and orchestra nestle inside that circle, waiting for spring.
All Souls’, and they’re stopped in this place to share earth with the restless dead. Already November, and only one snatching all year. She thinks of that poor lad’s parents, perhaps spending today at the freshly turned earth of his grave. His father on the phone, voice cracked in shock. The Crow sitting in her office in the Grub, glowering as it listened to her stutter apologies to the boy’s parents.Does the Crow punish you after we lose somebody?Mackie had asked, falteringly, one night after a bottle of wine. And she had said,Of course not, it’s not a monster, because the truth was too complicated and too humiliating even for Mackie’s wise tenderness. Percy Montgomery, cleaning his glasses so as not to have to look her in the eye:Each snatching adds a full cycle of the moon to your service here. No, I didn’t tell you that and I deeply regret it. The Crow would never have let me go otherwise.
They all think they’re safer after a snatching. They think it works like some kind of pressure cooker, that after the thing’s blown it has to build up in tension again before someone else will disappear. Belinda tries to disabuse thecompany of these silly notions: she is merciless about the fines and the curfews and the rules, passing on the Crow’s punishments to the rest of them because why should she be the only one to suffer indentured servitude?
She shuts the window and pulls down the blind. All Souls’. Still uncomfortably close to All Hallow’s Eve, hoof-prints near a grave and too much mist to see much beyond your hand. She opens her laptop and reads the newest email from the bell smith.
