‘Of course.’
‘Didn’t you know?’ They all nattered back, except Tamara.
‘Of course they don’t exist,’ she said.
‘Thank you, Tamara!’ Oscar shouted, folding his arms and sitting down in Olive’s chair, enjoying her little exaggerated huff behind him. ‘See. The voices of reason.’ Oscar looked at Olive and gestured to himself and Tamara.
‘Erm…’ Doug raised his hand.‘I’m calling bullshit,’ he said with a glint in his eye.
‘What?’ said Tamara, sitting on the floor and stretching out her legs into second position, her flexibility on show.
‘When we were inWest Side Storyat the Festival theatre in Edinburgh last year I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move as fast as you did when you ran into our dressing room, crying because you thought you’dseen the Great Lafayette.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Tamara snapped.
‘Yes,’ Doug laughed. ‘You did!’
‘Who?’ asked Oscar.
‘Lafayette.’ Olive turned to Oscar. ‘He was a magician that died in a fire when one of his tricks went wrong on stage. His ghost has been known to haunt the left wing ever since.’
‘Just the left wing?’ Oscar folded his arms.
‘Yup,’ said Doug.
‘Right…’
‘No, the left,’ Doug smirked.
‘Something the matter?’ Olive leant around from behind Oscar to get a look at his cynical face, her cheeks rosy, and her eyes sparkling with humour.
‘No, no. Nothing at all. Everyone in this room believes in a ghost that only haunts one half of a theatre. Everything’s… normal,’ he chuckled.
‘Look, be as sceptical as you like,but sometimes spooky things happen that no one can explain,’ Olive said, plonking herself down on the floor beside him. She glanced over at Michael, who was still sipping his takeaway coffee and flipping through his notes and script pages. She estimated they had at least another four to six minutes before he realised he’d let them all slip into chatter again.
‘I’m not sceptical. I’m right!Ghosts don’t exist.’
‘Look, we’re not judging you, Oscar. We all thought that too before we stepped inside a draughty, creaky, dark and spooky theatre where the rules of time and space don’t apply.’
‘The rules of time and space… did everyone smoke something during the lunch break and I missed out?’
‘What Olive means is, you’ll spend what you think is four hours in a theatredoing rehearsals only to find out it’s been five minutes,’ Doug explained.
‘And you’ll be in someone’s dressing room one day and when you go to find it the next, it won’t be where you left it,’ Howard chipped in.
‘And all the hiding places you think are secret are never quite secret enough!’ said Sammy from the doorway with her great big rucksack perched on her back and her danceclothes on underneath her coat.
‘And finally, she arrives!’ Olive cried, getting up from the floor and rushing to hug her friend. ‘How’d it go?’
‘How it always goes.’ Sammy rolled her eyes and wiped her dark hair off her sweaty forehead.
‘So you nailed it then?’
‘They want to see me again, but you can just never tell, can you? They keep their cards so close to theirchest.’
‘Well, the fact they want to see you again is amazing,’ said Olive, taking Sammy’s bag from her and putting it in the corner with her own.
‘And Oscar?’ Sammy was shrugging off her bag and her coat but paused to say, ‘Ghosts exist. There’s no debate. And if you don’t believe, you’ll just attract more ghosts to haunt your disbelieving arse, so I’d watch it if I were you.’
