Outside the theatre Nell stopped for a minute and caught her breath. She was only ten days into an eight-week run but already the thought of setting eyes on Bernard made her queasy. The bullet shape of his head, his stomach taut under his rollneck top, the mean shape of his mouth as he heaped scorn on everything the company said or did. Nell made herself concentrate on the rest of the cast – Chrissie, who played Bernard’s wife, solid, sensible Gavin. And Saul, quiet and watchful, who’d read with her at the audition.
Nell heard raised voices even as she ran up the stairs. ‘This tour,’ Bernard was saying as she opened the dressing-room door, ‘is a poncy load of rubbish.’ He had a list of the venues in his hand and he was staring at it in disgust. ‘You said we’d be playing working men’s clubs, political centres, union halls. But no, we’re off to the Ambleside Women’s Institute, and from there we’ll be at . . . wait for it . . . The Lake District Ramblers’ Association.’
Matthew, their director, a pale man, prone to attacks of giggles, swallowed. ‘We will be going to Southport. That’s only an hour from Liverpool. And we’re still holding out hope for York.’
Chrissie put a hand on Bernard’s arm. ‘Whoever’s in the audience, they’re still important. Think of the service you’re providing. The inspiration.’
‘Inspiration my arse,’ Bernard shook her off. And Chrissie retreated, wounded, to her allotted space before the mirror.
There was a pause while Matthew gathered up the courage to give notes. ‘So,’ he took a short shallow breath. ‘Nell. Not quite sure what you were doing last night, but good. Maybe a tad quicker? And funnier if you can? Gavin, you’re losing the laugh at the end of Act 1. Take your time. Stay with it. Now, Chrissie.’ He sighed. ‘Energy.’ He made a swooping movement with his hand. ‘It’s not Swan Lake. And was your apron on backwards? I see. Interesting. Keep it.’ Saul, as ever, was perfect. ‘So, Bernard . . .’ The others all looked up. What would he say to Bernard, who’d mangled his last big speech to such an extent that the sense had all but disappeared. ‘Bernard,’ he said. ‘That was . . .’ Matthew closed his eyes and opened them again. ‘Unique.’
‘Cheers!’ Bernard raised a tumbler of what everyone hoped was water to his lips. ‘What would you do without me, eh?’ And draining the contents of the glass, he went down to the stage to check his props.
‘Oh my God,’ Nell called Pierre from a phone box in Keswick. ‘He’s getting worse. Tonight he cut my cue, then skipped to the end of the scene, so, I promise you, I walked on, and then without saying a word, ten minutes later I walked off again.’
Pierre cackled with laughter. ‘I’ll have to come up and see it. Unless of course it transfers to the West End.’
‘The weird thing is . . .’ Nell was reluctant to admit it. ‘Some nights he’s sort of brilliant.’
‘Maybe Bernard’s actually a genius.’
‘He certainly thinks he is. But the truth is he’s probably a sad old drunk.’
‘Darling . . .’ Nell could hear the buzz and beep of switchboard phones. ‘I’d love to talk, but I’m meant to be in a managers’ meeting in . . . Christ, twenty-five seconds. Call tomorrow?’
‘Sure. Bye then. Bye.’ Nell stood with the receiver to her ear, breathing in the last echoes of a familiar voice. She could try Charlie, but Charlie wouldn’t pick up if she saw an unknown number, and Sita was in Bristol, in a hospital drama, providing the subplot of a nurse forced into an arranged marriage. Anyway, Nell thought, looking at the darkening hills. I’d better get going. For one brief moment she considered calling her father, who was in Scotland, not so very far away, but the thought that his new wife might answer and ask who it was, stopped her from dialling. Instead she stepped out into the late afternoon, glancing at the peak above her where all day fog had been collecting. As she walked towards the theatre, white tendrils began spiralling down, cloaking the already silent town in quiet. Who would their audience be tonight? she wondered as she hurried through the empty streets, and she tried to imagine who might venture out on an evening like this to see a play about the evils of capitalism, even if it was billed as a farce. But then again, what else was there to do here? Nell peered into the window of a boutique, already closed, displaying an assortment of heather-coloured capes. There was a newsagent, shut too, and a pub with gritty, rendered walls, the silhouettes of a few early drinkers passing blurrily behind its mottled glass. But for all Nell knew, tonight there might be someone in for whom this play would be the bright spark of their lives. Someone changed for ever. Set on a different course. As a child she’d been taken to see a touring production of The Playboy of the Western World and from almost the first scene she’d felt her heart expand until she’d thought it might be going to burst. I’ll do anything, she told herself, as the actors laughed and fought and danced, I’ll dress up in sacking, play an old woman, sweep the stage, if it means that one day I can be like them.
‘Good show tonight,’ Bernard said later as they climbed into the mini-van, half an hour later than usual. ‘Really excellent performance, if I say so myself.’ And in lieu of last orders which they’d all now missed due to an improvised dance routine inserted by Bernard into the second half, he lit up the stub end of his cigar, and took a swig of whisky from his hip flask.
But even so, no one expected, for a minute, that Bernard would desert them.
‘Where is he anyway?’ Matthew asked as they assembled in the vast dressing room of Southport’s Theatre Royal.
‘Don’t worry, he’ll turn up.’ Chrissie was handing round brightly coloured mugs of tea. ‘He’s turned up late before.’ And it was true. Bernard had arrived more than once after the half, sauntering in, unrepentant. ‘Places to go, people to see,’ he’d winked, and he’d waved his furled-up newspaper in their faces. Nell often wondered where he’d actually been. She tried to picture him sitting in his B&B, his shoes kicked off, his gut spilling over his suit trousers, fathoming out the crossword, just waiting for the day to be done.
But the half came and went. ‘Where is the bastard?’ Matthew fretted, having failed to get him on his phone, and he threw one weak shoulder against the wall, causing the mirror lights to flicker. Just then the stage manager thundered up the stairs with the news that Bernard had been seen, earlier that day, hitching towards Manchester. ‘God knows where he’ll be by now.’
‘No!’ Chrissie looked as shaken as if her own real husband had abandoned her. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘We’ll think of something.’ Gavin began massaging her shoulders. ‘Don’t worry. Just stay calm.’
Nell remained silent. She was playing Bernard’s noodle-headed daughter-in-law, and she’d learnt from experience that any comments she made were usually ignored.
‘OK,’ Saul was drumming his fingers against the formica of the dressing table. ‘Matthew, how about you go on with the book, and then we get a few days off anyway, and we can find someone who’d be able to take over.’
‘The show must go on,’ Chrissie said weakly.
Matthew didn’t look remotely relieved. ‘Fantastic idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll get someone to start calling round right now,’ and paler than ever he went through to Bernard’s dressing room to try on his voluminous costume.
Nell stood in the wings, her hand over her mouth, too frightened to laugh as she watched the play unfold. Matthew’s pork-pie hat was perched at an unstable angle, the cigar, Bernard insisted on smoking, trembling in his hand. As he spoke Matthew waved his sheaf of photocopied script, but he didn’t refer to it at all. The audience, as usual, looked stunned. Go on, don’t stop, Nell willed him on, as he fumbled for the lines, and then mercifully Gavin climbed through the window in his policeman’s uniform and began chasing him round the stage.
‘How’s it going?’ Saul was beside her in the dark. Nell inhaled his warm and smoky smell, so familiar from this moment of proximity, repeated every night. ‘Not bad,’ she kept her eyes on the stage, ‘but he’s not sticking to the script.’
They stood side by side, listening to Matthew as he scrambled from scene to scene.
‘Bloody hell.’ Saul tensed, his cue hurtling towards him. ‘I’m on.’
‘Have fun,’ Nell whispered as he glided away from her, too superstitious to risk Good Luck, and she watched for the moment when he and Matthew came face to face. There was a tiny terrifying pause as neither of them spoke. Instead they stood, rigid, their eyes glued to each other’s, the corners of their mouths twitching, hilarity dancing in their throats, but then Saul bit hard into his lip, turned away and with a visible effort of control, spoke his first line.
‘What’s happening?’ Chrissie was beside Nell now, and before she could answer, they heard their own cue, three pages early. ‘What shall we do?’ Chrissie gasped and Nell, catching Saul’s frantic look, grabbed her hand and rushed her on.
Matthew didn’t notice. He flapped his unused script and raged and roared into his big monologue while the rest of the cast stood in a line, their eyes on the floor, waiting to find their way back in. Nell stood beside Saul, the only time in the entire play when she did, and as she listened for her cue, she forgot about her Action and her Activities, the rhythm of her Inner Attitude, her decision never again to get entangled with an actor, or for that matter, a stage manager, and instead drifted into daydreams – Saul, choosing the seat beside her as they travelled in the mini-van, Saul, draping his arm around her as they slept. Nell snapped open her eyes. Twice now she’d been so caught up in these reveries that she’d forgotten to come in with her line and Saul himself was forced to reach out and nudge her, sharply, in the side. ‘It wasn’t me, Inspector, honest, it was those bastards upstairs,’ she shouted, still, amazingly, evoking a laugh, and Matthew, seeing the end in sight, gained confidence, even attempting a small routine with oranges that he’d warned everybody he’d most likely omit. But he managed it, almost, catching one orange in the crook of his arm, another flying into the third row, so that the play ended in a burst of applause with the five actors bowing low down to the floor, beaming, while Matthew’s script was hurled high into the air.
That night the drinks flowed. ‘Cheers. Well done, mate.’ Even Gavin, usually so serious, sat grinning at their table. ‘What a relief, we don’t need him after all.’ He held up his pint, and they agreed that life without Bernard was infinitely superior.
Philip, Bernard’s replacement, was a small, neat man. He’d played the same part at Taunton only eighteen months before and he’d spent his train journey re-acquainting himself with the play, so that by the first rehearsal he already had a better grasp of the lines than Bernard ever had. They spent all of Sunday rehearsing, and Monday too, and by Monday night the play was just about ready.
‘Break a leg,’ ‘See you on there,’ ‘You’ll be great,’ they all told him and each other, and during the performance the only alarm that sounded was when Nell drifted into her daydream and forgot to come in with her line.
‘You dope.’ Matthew sat down beside her. ‘What’s going on in that dreamy head of yours? I’m watching you, and I see it, you go all soppy.’
Matthew was like a girl. He loved to talk. He loved to gossip and surmise, and once, before a show at Wigton, they’d stopped at a tearoom and he’d eaten three cream cakes in a row. ‘Come on . . .’ Matthew wasn’t letting it go, ‘you can tell me in confidence . . . you know I’ll never breathe a word.’
‘Stop it.’ Nell shushed him. ‘You’d be the last person I’d tell.’ And just then Saul appeared and she took a quick gulp of her wine.
Matthew winked and raised his eyebrows, and the next night on stage Nell almost cut him off, she came in so quickly with her line.
It took a few days before anyone could bear to admit it, but Philip wasn’t funny. True, he knew his lines, didn’t branch off into spontaneous improvisation or cut someone else’s speech, leaving them open-mouthed and stranded, as Bernard had often done, but even so, there was something vital missing.
Philip was impervious. ‘Good show tonight, don’t you think?’ he said as he sat neat and amiable at the bar.
‘I have told him,’ Matthew was quick to waive his responsibility, ‘but he insists on doing it the Taunton way,’ and the others shook their heads and ordered more drinks and drifted into favourite tales of their own and others’ escapades on other nights, in other productions, in other theatres and plays.
What none of them had realised was that it was Bernard who’d held the company together. His awful jokes, his petty complaints, his outbursts on and off stage had united them as a group. But now that they had Philip, with his hiking boots and light all-weather clothing, they found they had nothing in common. Splinter groups formed. Nell and Chrissie spent an afternoon looking round Scarborough. Gavin and Saul attempted to find a pub that showed the rugby, but soon, it was Nell, Saul and Matthew that sloped off most regularly together. Gorging themselves in teashops, wandering round deserted seaside towns, drinking past last orders, hoping to come across a nightclub in Stockton or Penrith. One night, just as in Nell’s fantasy, they arrived at their bed and breakfast late and finding no one up, and Nell’s room locked from the inside, they piled into Matthew and Saul’s twin room. Matthew lay down first, not bothering to undress or even climb under the bedspread, and Nell, suddenly both cold and sober, watched as Saul tugged the covers out from under him and tucked him in. They stood there, then, uncertain, and Saul offered to sleep on the floor. ‘No, don’t be silly,’ she said, and so he pulled off his jeans and climbed into the narrow bed, and with that same shy smile with which he greeted her each night in the wings, he looked up at her now. ‘Getting in?’
Nell slipped out of her own jeans and crept in beside him. There was no room to be aloof. She lay against his side, her skin slowly warming with the heat of him. ‘Night then,’ he whispered, and she lay there, her heart racing, breathing in the familiar smell of smoke and sweat. This’ll never work, she thought, but gradually she felt Saul’s body soften, and the rhythm of his breathing lulled her into a wakeful, restless sleep.
‘Well,’ Chrissie plumped down beside her in the mini-van, her voice rich with delight. ‘What happened to you last night?’
Nell looked away. She knew it was cruel, but she couldn’t bring herself to offer up what was expected. ‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ she said. ‘I kipped down with the boys, that’s all.’
‘Oh,’ Chrissie looked deflated. She began to rummage in her cavernous bag and when she found what she was looking for, a packet of digestive biscuits, she didn’t offer one to Nell. Be like that, she seemed to say, and once they reached the theatre Chrissie stared into her own reflection in the dressing-room mirror, spending an inordinate amount of time arranging her make-up, pinning up her cards. On stage, professional that she was, Chrissie was warm and twinkly, but as soon as the interval arrived she turned her face away again and didn’t speak. Nell made a bed of chairs and closed her eyes, and allowed herself to relive the moment when Saul had appeared beside her in the wings. ‘How’s it going?’ he’d asked, and he’d slipped his hand under the hair at the nape of her neck and held it there. Now she imagined leaning back and being held for ever, and she thought of those first lonely weeks of rehearsal when the red tower of the phone box, the only colour in the endless grey and green of the Lake District, filled her with such longing for home that she’d sometimes pull back the heavy door of the booth and stand inside, breathing in the ash and dust smell, even when she had no one to call.
That night’s bed and breakfast was on the outskirts of Newcastle, and after the pub they travelled there together in the van. ‘Hey,’ Matthew put an arm round her shoulders as they stumbled in. ‘Come in here with us. You don’t want to get mixed up with those hill walkers.’ Blushing, Nell tried to quieten him.
‘Come on. Let’s stick together,’ he insisted.
Nell glanced across at Saul, but he didn’t catch her eye.
‘OK, just for a minute.’ But like the night before, as soon as he was in his room Matthew collapsed on to his bed.
Nell stared down at him, his shoes still on, a snore already rumbling in his nose. ‘Is he OK?’
‘He’s gone to pieces since Bernard left. His job’s on the line and he knows it.’ Saul tucked him in. ‘That, or he’s got some pretty disgusting habits. Unlike me, of course,’ he grinned. ‘I’m perfect.’
Nell grinned back. He was perfect! She’d thought that the first time she’d seen him. With his ragged clothes and Doc Marten boots, and the quiet way he smiled. ‘Hey,’ he put out his hand to her, and when she took it, he led her to the other bed. ‘ ‘It wasn’t me, Inspector, honest,’ he whispered as they lay down, ‘it was those bastards upstairs,’ and as if he’d always known what was in her mind, he wrapped his arms around her and covered her smile with his own.
The hotel was silent when Nell woke. A pale grey light fell through the curtains and the smell of old bacon hung in the air. Nell craned to see her watch on the bedside table. It was after twelve, and Matthew’s bed was empty. Very carefully she slid free, untangling herself from the weight of Saul’s limbs, mindful not to look at him too closely as he lay, mouth open, black stubble already shadowing his chin.
The water in the bathroom was cold. Nell let it run, hoping to feel it warm, but when it wouldn’t, she filled a basin and began to wash, soaping her armpits, rinsing between her legs, letting her mind run over and dissect the awkward, hushed and furtive choreography of last night’s sex. How bony Saul’s body was, how urgent his desire, the terrible moment when Matthew seemed to wake, half sitting, before he fell back with a snore. Nell shivered. The water ran in rivulets down her sides, collecting in grey suds on the floor. ‘Lovely girl,’ he’d breathed into her ear, and now as she allowed herself to feel his hands on her again, the sweet searching of his mouth, the painful, exhilarating moment when he pressed himself inside her, she felt the air catch in the bowl of her stomach and she leant over the basin, her legs weak, and moaned.
There was a tap at the door. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Wait!’ She panicked, grabbing a towel, wrapping it round herself.
Saul was already dressed. ‘Morning,’ he said, looking much the same as always, and he leant over and splashed his face.
Nell’s own face looked pale and bare, and she hadn’t risked borrowing a toothbrush in case it was Matthew’s. ‘I’ll see if I can get into my room,’ she told him, and holding her clothes in her arms she ran along the corridor and tapped at the door.
Chrissie smiled coldly. ‘Hi.’ She blew on the fingers of one hand where new red polish was drying.
Nell unzipped her bag, and pulled out fresh clothes, aware of Chrissie’s eyes on her. Aware too that now, through her desertion, this was Chrissie’s room. ‘What are you up to today?’
‘Nothing much,’ Chrissie was applying another coat of varnish.
Nell pulled on jeans and a silk blouse. Her clothes felt loose, her body slimmed down with the constant travelling and the regularly missed meals.
‘I think I’ll have a pampering day here,’ Chrissie stretched out. She had on a pair of feathery pink slippers, very much like the ones her character wore in the play, and beside the bed was a large packet of chocolate biscuits. For one moment Nell imagined lying down too. Telling her everything. Painting her own nails. Winning a biscuit as reward.
‘OK,’ Nell said. ‘I’d better get going . . . I’ll see you back here, or at the theatre.’
Chrissie looked up at her, and Nell remembered what it felt like to be lonely. ‘Bye,’ she said, forcing herself away, and she ran back along the corridor to where Saul was waiting in his room.
Saul and Nell walked away from their Bed and Breakfast, through near-empty streets, passing the occasional bare-legged girl, her heels clacking, pinpricks of cold mottling her skin. ‘Any idea where we’re going?’ she asked, and Saul said yes, this was the way to the centre, the quayside, they’d find somewhere there where they could eat.
‘How do you know?’ she asked, admiring.
‘We drove this way last night.’
He took hold of her hand, and they walked on, the smell of the river sharpening the air, gulls wheeling above them, cawing, heading back out to sea. ‘What do you fancy?’ Saul peered into the dark interior of a pub.
‘Maybe there?’ Nell pointed to a café, a hot white fug of steam flowing from its door. They pushed their way in and sat opposite each other. Pie and mash, sausage sandwich, ham, eggs, beans. Nell wanted everything. She ordered a cup of tea. ‘I’ll have liver and bacon,’ Saul decided and Nell looked up at the waiter, a large man with a tea towel draped from his pocket. ‘Shepherd’s pie and peas.’
‘Reet you are.’ He hollered their order through to the kitchen, and he swept up a teacup and a stack of egg-stained plates and carried them off on one brawny arm.
It was warm in the café. Nell and Saul sipped their hot drinks and stared out of the window. ‘So, um,’ Nell started. There were so many things she didn’t know. All they’d ever really talked about was the play. The play and the people in it, the unfolding drama of each day. She remembered Matthew telling them, excited, in rehearsals, how this play was a sensation when it first appeared in London. The audiences had responded to its themes of social injustice, of class division and corruption, and they’d stood up at the end and roared. But now, a decade later, the response was never more than polite. ‘They eased their consciences by voting in New Labour,’ Bernard had snarled, when they still had Bernard, ‘and now they’re happy to spend the rest of their lives shopping in IKEA.’
‘Sorry?’ Saul leant towards her. ‘What were you saying?’
‘Oh yes, I was wondering . . . in London, Peckham, is it? What kind of a place do you have?’
‘Small,’ he told her. ‘Ex-council. Not too bad.’
‘Right. I see. Do you . . .’ she needed to know more. ‘Do you live on your own?’
Saul lit a cigarette. ‘No. I share. With Lorraine.’ He blew out a plume of smoke and looked at her. ‘My wife.’
Nell nodded quickly to show she was unfazed. But even as she did so she saw that he was smiling. ‘It’s all right. We got married one afternoon at drama school. We were best mates anyway, we just wanted to see how it felt.’
‘How did it feel?’
Saul squinted. ‘All right.’
All right? Nell felt her heart squeeze. But she thanked the waiter brightly as he banged down her plate of food. They ate in silence, the hot mush of food pinning Nell to the chair. They ordered more tea, and Nell dithered over pudding. Treacle sponge. Apple crumble. Custard with jam tart. She longed for them all, but at the same time she couldn’t face it. Saul lit another cigarette. ‘I wonder what Bernard’s doing now,’ he said, and Nell pictured him sitting in a restaurant, as she’d once seen him in Kendal, a napkin tucked into his shirt front, waiting to be served. He’d been alone, with his newspaper and cigar, and Nell couldn’t help but feel impressed by how seriously he took himself.
It was nearly three by the time they wandered out into the drizzle. What shall we do now? they asked each other as they walked aimlessly towards the Tyne. At the top of the road was a phone box. ‘Ahhh.’ Nell hurried instinctively towards it. Her phone was out of credit again.
‘Use mine if you want.’ Saul called after her, but Nell already had her fingers hooked inside the iron groove of the handle. ‘It’s OK,’ she needed to talk to someone from home. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ But as she swung open the door she saw a small orange wallet sitting on the metal shelf. She picked it up and there inside was a wad of ten-pound notes. Fifty, seventy, ninety pounds. ‘Look,’ she held the door for Saul. There was nothing in the wallet except money. It must belong to someone very young, and Nell imagined a girl just back from collecting the dole. No bank cards, or travel cards, or library cards. Nothing.
Saul counted out the notes. ‘What do you want to do?’
Nell looked along the street both ways. What she wanted, and also didn’t want, was that someone would come tearing round the corner to claim it. ‘What if we handed it in to the police?’
It seemed a ludicrous idea. Would anyone think of going there to ask for it? And would the police be honest enough to hand it back? Not if they were anything like the policeman in their play, corrupt and heavy-handed, and if their play was to be believed, they were the good guys, she and Saul, and all establishment figures were rotten.
‘If we left it,’ Nell mused, ‘the next person who comes along . . .’ and for some reason she imagined Bernard, his mean round mouth, his beer belly and dainty legs, taking the purse off to the pub.
‘How about we divide it up?’ Saul hesitated. ‘But only if we spend it before the end of the day.’
‘That’s it. That’s brilliant.’ They rushed on, their eyes straining for any suitable shop – passing wholesalers, ironmongers, bathroom showrooms full of fixtures and fittings. Eventually they came to a department store. Nell pulled the purse out of her pocket.
‘Surely there’ll be something,’ she handed over fifty pounds. ‘You take that.’
‘No,’ Saul protested, ‘it’s got to be fair,’ and he unravelled a torn five-pound note from his pocket and pressed it on her.
At first they wandered through the shop together, subdued by the hush of its interior, the scent of perfume, the array of scarves, cushions and dried flowers. Nell stopped by a stand of necklaces. Round balls of different-coloured glass, or was it plastic? ‘Nice,’ Saul smirked, and embarrassed, Nell turned away.
There was an escalator and a sign for Ladies Fashions. Nell knew she’d never be able to choose anything with Saul beside her, and now that she was here she felt an overwhelming desire to buy something, anything, as if that was the sole purpose of life.
‘Shall we meet by the main door at five?’
‘Sure,’ Saul agreed, ‘right,’ and he wandered off between the stands of neatly folded T-shirts, woollen V-necked jerseys, bath mats, towels.
Ladies Fashions was a sombre affair. Dark cardigans with gold buttons. Dresses with moulded shoulders and built-in slips. She looked at the underwear but that seemed wasteful. To spend so much on something that only someone who was already pretty damn interested was going to see. Anyway, when she got close, the underwear was frightening. Padded leopard-print constructions, pants the size of the moon. She raked through knitwear, but everything had one unnecessary detail – a bow, or a flounce, or a row of buttons, that needn’t have been there. Her own clothes, when she caught sight of them, seemed oddly perfect in comparison. But there was one skirt that wasn’t entirely horrible. It was navy, as was almost everything, with very fine bright yellow stripes half hidden in the gather. As she tried it on, an announcement boomed from a grill in the wall, the shop would be closing in ten minutes. She looked at herself in the mirror. The skirt was all right. She pulled up her shirt to reveal the waistband on her newly narrow waist. Yes, she decided and she rushed out to hand over the money, almost exactly the right amount, before it was too late.
Saul was waiting in the street. He’d bought himself a pair of shoes, not the Doc Martens that he usually wore, but black and pointed, with an inlay of suede.
‘Great,’ they said, examining each other’s purchases. ‘Nice.’ But as they walked towards the theatre Nell felt deflated. It’s as if we’ve committed a crime, she thought, we should have given the money away, to a beggar or a single mother, and she glanced at Saul, and wondered if he too felt soiled.
The show that night was half empty. ‘Matthew’s gone to London,’ Chrissie told her coldly, from her seat beside the radiator. ‘We’re up and running now, I don’t suppose we need him to be here, every night.’
‘I see.’ Nell turned away, quickly, before the subject of the night ahead, Saul’s empty room, ballooned between them. Instead she pulled out the new skirt. It wasn’t really very nice. Or if it was, it didn’t suit her.
‘Splashing out?’ Chrissie eyed her, and Nell, in a sudden fit of inspiration, turned towards her. ‘Would you like it?’
‘Me? Chrissie patted her stomach and laughed. ‘It wouldn’t fit me, are you kidding?’ But later, when she made the tea, she asked Nell if she wanted a cup.
‘How’s it going?’ Saul murmured as they waited in the wings, standing close, his sinewy arm beside her.
‘Fine.’
‘Listen,’ he leant in to her. ‘I’ve got someone in tonight. It’s a bit awkward, it’s . . . it’s Lorraine, I didn’t know she was coming. I guess she wanted to surprise me, and now she’s suddenly turned up.’
Nell didn’t look at him.
‘So if I don’t see you afterwards. The thing is, we’ll probably go and get something to eat. An Indian or something.’
‘Right.’ Nell kept her eyes on Philip, who never missed a line.
Very lightly Saul put his hand on her shoulder.
‘That’s you,’ she said, as they heard his cue, and he glided away from her on to the stage. Nell stood and watched him, breathing in the last traces of his smell, and she wondered how Chrissie would hide her amusement when later that night she knocked on the door of their shared room and asked to be let back in.