Jason Butler had been a dancer with muscles in places that Olive hadn’t realised you could even have muscles, and although the conversationbetween them was never particularly riveting they seemed to be able to talk about nothing for hours on end and never get bored. Although Jason had had a girlfriend when rehearsals had started, they’d split up in the first week of performances and he’d made his move on Olive when they’d been out celebrating the end of a successful run of the first eight shows. From that point onwards, Oliveand Jason were inseparable. They would kiss in her dressing room during every interval, and they’d elongate their days by going for drinks after the show at the pub across the road, just so they had a little more time together.
Every relationship that’s formed in the West End will move at the speed of light, but when Olive and Jason had finally had sex, despite it being nearer the end oftheir run inLittle Shop of Horrors, Olive felt it had happened quite quickly. She knew that was the consequence of the theatre bubble – when you spend that much time locked up with a group of very liberal, free-thinking, creative people, sooner or later, things will start to spice up.
It was only until she came into work the next day, thinking nothing had changed, to find actually everythinghad changed. Jason had avoided her eyes across the stage in warm-up and sought conversation elsewhere. He hadn’t come to her dressing room in the interval, and when she went to find him he was missing from his own. She tried to shrug it off, hoping that if something were truly wrong, he’d talk to her about it, but with the contract nearing its end, Olive found herself wondering what would happenwhen they were no longer in each other’s pockets. Being loved-up was easy when you were forced to be in the same place as each other, but when you lived at opposite ends of the city and weren’t going to be seeing each other every day, it was harder to keep the momentum going on a relationship, especially when one of you had decided to ignore the other without rhyme or reason.
Olive hadnever been one to beat about the bush. She liked everyone’s feelings out in the open where she could see them and keep an eye on them.
‘What’s going on?’ She caught Jason’s arm at stage door before he whizzed past her, his beanie hat pulled down around his ears and his backpack high on his back.
‘I have to get my train,’ he said, pulling away from her, but he hesitated and Olivetook her chance to touch his arm again.
‘Jason…’ she pleaded.
‘Look.’ He pulled her to one side so that none of the fans crowded around stage were within earshot. ‘I’m not into… this any more,’ he said, his eyes darting from her to the fans behind them.
‘What do you mean you’re not into this any more? What changed from yesterday to today?’ She shook her head.
‘You can’tbe angry at me for changing my mind,’ he huffed.
‘Oh, I’m not,’ Olive had answered, feeling her fingers ball into fists, her nails digging into her palms. ‘Change your mind all you want, Jason.’
‘Then why are you so pissed off at me?’ he said, like she was someone he barely knew. Someone annoying that he was trying to cut loose.
‘I’m angry at you for avoiding me. For makingme feel like it’s me who’s done something wrong.’
He sighed and rubbed his temples with his hands and Olive knew it wasn’t because of anything other than a desire to hide his face from her.You know you’ve been an arsehole, she thought.
‘You’re just… wrong for me. Or we’re not right. Together. Or something like that,’ he said.
‘“Something like that”?’
‘Yeah,’ he said,taking a step away from her. ‘I need to get my train.’
‘Okay, Jason,’ Olive said, and she let him practically run away from her.
Two weeks later, their short summer run ofLittle Shop of Horrorscame to an end and it was only once the show was over that Olive discovered what had been going on. A message dropped into her Facebook inbox from Rosanna Lime, an American actress quicklyon the rise in the UK. Olive recalled that she had just started a run inAnnie Get Your Gunwith none other than Jason Butler. The Facebook message began:
Olive. You don’t know me and this may be completely out of line, but… I need to know.
Rehearsals for Annie Get Your Gun began six weeks ago and I started getting more than friendly with a guy calledJason Butler who is in our ensemble…
Once they’d gotten to the bottom of it, it turned out Jason was not only dabbling in half-arsed relationships with Olive and Rosanna at the same time, but the girlfriend he’d claimed to have split up with in the first place was also still on the scene.
‘He’s a star-fucker,’ Olive’s best friend Lou had said, sipping froma large glass of white wine.
‘A what?’ Olive sniffed from underneath several blankets, reaching for the chocolate caramel digestives.
‘A star-fucker. Someone who just keeps penetrating the next “big thing” on the scene until he’s worked his way up the ladder to stardom.’ Lou shrugged as if what she was saying was common knowledge.
‘People do that?’ Olive sniffed.
‘Clearly.’She gestured to poor Olive with her mascara-stained eyes, the biscuit crumbs in her scraggly hair and the several dozen scrunched-up tissues in a sea around the sofa.
Olive had never forgotten that heartbreak, and whilst she genuinely felt it would be different with Oscar – she could feel his sincerity even when he was simply putting his arm around her – she wanted to be certain.
‘Doyouwant to have sex withme?’ Interrupting her wander down memory lane, Oscar moved round to the side of her armchair, got on his knees and faced her.
‘… I’m undecided.’ She squinted her eyes at him, a smile playing at the corners of her plump lips.
