‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Jack sighed. ‘Have I really got to spell it out?’
‘Please do,’ Bridie said, gritting her teeth, wishing he wouldn’t be so condescending. She was beginning to wish she hadn’tasked him to go there with her. She felt his hands on her shoulders, his touch making her tremble, as he turned her to face the poster. He pointed at Rufus, then Isobel Raine. ‘What if you’re right, and they did have an affair?’
Bridie shrugged. She felt his hands drop from her shoulders. She turned around to face him. ‘And …?’ She had a feeling Jack was building up to a point.
‘You look like Isobel Raine. Not to state the obvious, but …’
Bridie was about say, so what, when it hit her – the obvious. ‘Well, that’s just … that’s preposterous.’
‘Is it? People have affairs and have children outside their marriages all the time.’
‘But … but …’ Bridie swallowed. ‘For one thing, Mum would have had to be in on it, and believe me, given the photo I saw of her looking Isobel’s way, there’s no way she would have brought me up if I was … was …’
‘Isobel’s daughter, and not her own?’ Jack stepped in.
‘Precisely. In any case, why would Isobel have done that – given me up?’
Jack shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Bridie breathed a huge sigh of relief when she remembered one fact they’d overlooked. A fact that made Jack’s unwelcome observation, assumption – she didn’t even know what to call it – completely untrue.
‘She disappeared during a show and nobody ever saw her again. Reggie told me.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’
‘Yeah – rumour had it she fell, or jumped, from the sea wall, and drowned, and the theatre has been haunted by her ghost ever since.’
Jack burst out laughing.
Bridie frowned at him. Once again, she did not see what was so funny. She said as much.
‘Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at the possibility that she met an untimely death outside the theatre. But a ghost in the theatre?’ He shook his head. ‘Have you heard anything strange since you got the key and ventured back in there?’
Bridie shook her head. ‘But we did when we came in here as teenagers.’
‘Yeah, but that was just some older teenagers hiding, and giving us the fright of our lives – remember?’
Yes, Bridie remembered. But she remembered something else as well, something she hadn’t shared with Oliver and Jack for fear she’d get just this reaction; they’d laugh in her face for being such agirl. It was a memory she’d buried, which had only resurfaced when she’d ventured in the previous day. That night, as the three of them had run out of the theatre, she’d made the mistake of glancing over her shoulder, and she could have sworn she’d seen her – a woman on the stage.
‘What was that sound?’
Bridie rolled her eyes at Jack. ‘I’m not falling for it.’
‘No, seriously. I thought I heard something.’
Bridie looked at his expression. She joined him, standing there listening. ‘Sounds like the foyer door creaking.’
‘Bridie!’ a familiar voice called. ‘Are you in here?’
Bridie realised she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled. ‘It’s only Oliver. I left the theatre door unlocked.’
‘What’s he doing here?’ Jack asked. ‘Did you ask him to come here too?’
‘No.’ Bridie raised her eyebrows, quickly got out her phone and realised she’d missed two texts. ‘Oh, he must have wondered where I was when I didn’t meet up with him at the café this morning.’ To her dismay, Bridie had forgotten all about it.
