After twelve years of performing in the West End, Freddy Carlton had racked up her fair share of unfortunate experiences. Bitchy co-stars. Costume malfunctions. Having to stage-snog people with whom she’d had bad dates and even worse sex.
She’d never forgotten her lines during a public performance.
“Peanut, it wasn’t that bad.” Crossing her long legs, her older sister Sabrina pushed the basket of hot chips across the table. She’d been trying to stuff food down Freddy’s throat for the past half hour. The conviction that most ills could be assuaged with carbs ran deep in their family. “You covered really well. Barely a pause.”
Freddy put down her sangria and rubbed her eyes. “Yes. It really saved the day when I quoted a Bruce Springsteen song in the middle of a play set in 1945.”
In the instant under the lights when her mind had just...blanked, and her stomach had dropped to her shoes, some safety valve in her brain had stepped in and supplied a line. Unfortunately, it had fixed on the last song she’d been listening to in her dressing room to wind down before curtain.
She supposed she should be thankful she hadn’t trotted out a line from the second-to-last song the radio had infiltrated into her subconscious. She might have responded to her soldier lover’s romantic declaration with an obscene rap.
“Oh my God.” She pushed aside her glass and briefly dropped her forehead to the table. “Press night. I quoted Springsteen in front of a thousand people on press night.”
She’d never really screwed up on stage before. Certainly never so bizarrely. She usually confined any major hiccups to rehearsal. She had a reputation for reliability. Affability. Just tell Freddy where to go, what to do, who to be, and she’ll do it. She’d even throw in a smile.
Generally, the smile was genuine. She loved the stage, she loved her family, and she loved life. With the glaring exception of tonight’s debacle, her career was on the up. She ought to be skipping through the streets.
Not lying awake at night, not partying too much in the extremely brief gaps between productions, and not feeling physically sick before auditions.
“People may not even have noticed.” Sabrina pushed back a strand of wildly curling hair. They’d both inherited their father’s ringlets, but where Freddy was dark brown, like every Carlton in recent memory, Sabs had popped out a bright redhead. An early beginning on her lifelong tendency to stand out in the crowd. “And given how shite the actual dialogue was, I thought your improvisation was a massive improvement.”
“Sabrina,” Akiko protested from the other side of the booth, her heavy silver jewellery glinting in the light as she shifted. Her makeup was equally sparkly, the smooth bob that curved under her chin was currently dyed cobalt blue, and she looked more like a rock star than an academic. She’d been Sabrina’s best mate for over two decades, and Freddy literally couldn’t remember life before her comforting presence. “I thought the script was very good.” Akiko ran her fingers over the tines of her fork. She always fiddled when she was blatantly lying.
“Akiko, I love that you’re a nicer person than I am, but there’s politeness and there’s absolute bollocks.” Sabrina patted Freddy’s arm. “I’m assuming that—Jesus, I can’t even remember the name of tonight’s play, and it was only an hour ago. Seriously, kiddo, stop beating yourself up. A forgotten line is the least of that script’s worries.”
“You’re not being very respectful about your late grandmother’s work,” Akiko said, and Sabrina wrinkled her nose.
“I think enough people fawn over our infamous granny, don’t you? Dad’s one step away from erecting a ten-foot solid-gold statue of her on his balcony. And based on the script tonight, I’m baffled by the accolades. The ‘greatest British playwright of the twentieth century’? What, were the only other plays between 1900 and 1999 written by the typewriting monkey at the zoo?”
“The play I stuttered my way through tonight is Masquerade.” Freddy took a chip from the bowl Sabrina was waving in front of her again and bit it in half. They were venturing into territory that made boulders appear in her stomach, so she might as well pile some greasy spuds on top. “It’s one of the earliest Henrietta Carlton scripts.”
Their grandmother had written Masquerade at the age of twenty, several years before she’d hit the big time as both a playwright and an actor.
“Her writing inexperience shows in Masquerade. Hugely. It’s nothing like The Velvet Room.” The script that had catapulted Henrietta into the history books. “Which I assume you’ve still never read.” Freddy swallowed down another chip with a mouthful of sangria. The director of Masquerade wanted his cast to follow a healthy diet during the run. Nailing it.
“You should read it.” Akiko swirled the melting ice in her own drink. “I’m not that keen on just paging through a script like it’s a novel, but The Velvet Room is so poignant you forget you’re reading stage directions. Your grandmother grew into a cracker of a writer.”
Sabrina lifted finely threaded brows. “All that, and a brilliant actress, too. Almost seems too much talent for one person, doesn’t it?” She tweaked one of Freddy’s fluffing curls. “Thank God our little Frederica came along to keep the end up for this generation. Four centuries of thespians in the family, with X-factor spilling out of their Shakespearean ruffs, and it almost ended with—”
“A very talented journalist,” Akiko said loyally.
“Some drunk ginger floozy from the telly?” Freddy suggested at the same time, in a tongue-in-cheek attempt to divert the stream of the conversation.
Sabrina lifted her nose. “Excuse me, baby sister. I am perfectly sober. I can hold a cocktail.”
“You can hold about six in each hand at the TV Awards every year.”
“Entirely different situation.” Sabrina grinned. “Despite that piece of cheek, you wee shite, and even with a spot of Springsteen thrown in, I’m incredibly proud of what you can do. And I’ll even bone up on The Velvet Room, so I’m all set for your star turn in the West End revival next year.”
Freddy felt her smile fade from the inside out. Her heart gave a hard thump of trepidation and shrivelled, and the shadow probably spread to her face. “There’s no guarantee I’ll get a role in it.”
“Of course you will,” Sabrina said, and added with sisterly affection and zero tact, “Talent aside, you’re Henrietta’s granddaughter. Think of the marketing opportunities. Dad’s always got his eye on his investments, and this’ll be a triple coup. A performance royalty from the theatre, commission from your salary, and all the media appearances he’ll be able to milk out of you appearing in Grandma’s tour de force.” Her vivacious features slipped into that barbed wall of sarcasm that usually emerged when they were discussing their father. “Thanks to the offspring who isn’t a massive disappointment, Scrooge McDuck can pour another bucket of gold coins into that vault of millions he’s hoarding.”
Freddy felt a tinge of colour rush into her cheeks, and that knot in her chest twisted. She put down the rest of the chip in her hand.
Akiko folded her hands on the tabletop, studying Freddy with uncomfortably shrewd dark eyes. “You do want a role in The Velvet Room, Freddy?”
“What, Henrietta’s masterpiece? The Carltons’ biggest claim to fame?” Sabrina waved at someone who’d just come into the pub. “Freddy’s always banged on about what a good script it is. She’s almost as bad as Dad on that subject. Although at least she likes it for its artistic merit, not the rewards it generates.”
Akiko was still looking at Freddy.
She weighed her words. “It’s an excellent play. It really does deserve all the accolades.” She hadn’t actually answered Akiko’s question, and from her expression, it hadn’t gone unnoticed. Freddy appreciated the genius of The Velvet Room—but did she really, honestly, want to act in it?
No. She could say it silently, privately, in her own mind, but so far she hadn’t had the balls to say it aloud, even just to Sabrina.
After a moment, she lifted a shoulder. “The most likely director for the new season of The Velvet Room was in the audience tonight. This performance wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, was it?”
“You were probably just nervous,” Sabrina said, in a tone that suggested Freddy was eleven years old again and had just embarked on her first debut.
Incidentally, when she had debuted at eleven, she’d remembered every one of her lines.
“I’m sure press night is always terrifying,” Akiko said.
Yes, it was, even after all this time. Doubly so when her family were in the front rows, as well as the dozens of critics, including the dude who’d called her “duller than a pair of safety scissors” in the Westminster Post.
And the scrutiny would have been high tonight, because of the family connection. By choice, Freddy wouldn’t audition for any adaptations of her grandmother’s works. For several reasons, one being that enough of her career had been founded on nepotism. She hadn’t minded exploiting the connection in her teens, but unearned glory wore thin very quickly. With Carltons populating the theatres of London since the days of quills, bustles, and bubonic plague, she didn’t need to provide extra fodder for the critics to discuss the many and varied ways she had built a career on other people’s achievements.
However, her father was her manager, he did think it was good business sense to capitalise on the link, and when the casting call had gone out for Masquerade this season, he’d been dead set on having her in it. And she’d caved, to avoid the argument. As usual.
Akiko cleared her throat. “I’m not sure that unrelenting angst is really your thing, Freddy. I could see the natural glass-half-full sass itching to come out at every woe-laden moment.”
As usual, she’d hit the nail on the head. No, weepy philosophical introspection was not Freddy’s cup of tea, it had become increasingly apparent, and the admittedly mediocre script for Masquerade was so wreathed in despair and gloom that she’d had to listen to P. G. Wodehouse audiobooks in rehearsal downtime to keep up her spirits.
In that respect, The Velvet Room would be just as bad. It was beautifully written, but not exactly abundant with laughs.
It would, however, very likely sweep the National Theatre Awards and look bloody great on a CV.
Which, not so long ago, she’d have jotted down as item one on the priority list. Living up to the family legacy, reaching the highest salary bracket, winning countless Leading Actress awards, crossing over into film, meriting an incredibly long and detailed entry on Wikipedia—who wouldn’t want that?
Who wouldn’t find happiness in all of that?
She smooshed another chip into a greasy pillow between her finger and thumb.
“So, how was the show?” The question came from the next booth. The Prop & Cue was always packed to the rafters, as the closest pub to four of the major theatres, and the noise level was usually a continuous loud buzz, but every so often there was an unexpected lull. She could hear the man clearly, speaking in an attractive, melodious voice. “Where does tonight’s review fall on the scale of ‘could do better’ to ‘Jesus God, pass me the brain bleach’? Which poor sod’s career is in the crapper this time?”
“It’s unfortunate in some cases, but I’ve never trashed anyone’s career.”
Freddy raised her head. She knew that second voice. It was deep, with a distinctive curt resonance to it. She’d heard it just this week through her laptop speakers, while watching a Marlowe documentary on her afternoon off.
J. Ford-Griffin. Grumpiest TV presenter in the UK. And the witty wanker behind the scathing theatre reviews in the Westminster Post.
“If they can’t pick themselves up after one person’s criticism, they don’t deserve another person’s accolades.”
She could almost see him saying it, with the same expression he wore when discussing Elizabethan tragedy. The man looked like an assassin in a war film, and would be temperamentally suited to the part.
He probably even orgasmed with a frosty stare off into the middle distance.
Although it was unfair to judge by appearances. Behind the sub-zero remarks and laser eyes, he could be a total marshmallow. Maybe he went home every night, watched Titanic for the hundredth time, and wept sensitively into his pet kitten.
“Masquerade was a pile of tedious crap when it was committed to paper, it should never have made it as far as a stage, and it’s an embarrassment to Henrietta Carlton’s legacy that it’s still being produced. And of all the boring-as-fuck resurrections I’ve had to sit through, this was the worst.”
Across the table, Sabrina’s brows had snapped together. Freddy took a sip of her drink.
“Well, there’s the first few lines set to go. The column’s practically writing itself.” The other voice was tinged with humour. “I hope you have something nice to say, my friend. People will be starting to think you’re a right miserable bastard.”
A snort. “That was established by the time I was old enough to talk.”
Sabrina was still looking unaccountably irate. She was a protective sister, but she didn’t usually go from zero to homicidal at the first hint of professional criticism.
Thoughtfully, Freddy ran her fingertip through the rings of water on the table as the nicer man asked, “Who’s in it?”
“Adrian Blair, as usual blinding the audience with his veneers so they don’t notice the weaknesses in his performance. When the spotlight hits his teeth, it’s like looking directly into the sun.”
Freddy tried to keep quiet, but a tiny squeak made it out of her throat.
“Freddy Carlton.”
She’d been expecting it, but still jumped as those harsh tones spoke her name.
“I’ve interviewed her.” The other voice again. “She’s very...exuberant. Pretty. Lots of hair. Big arse. Not as striking as her sister, but much nicer.”
The night just kept getting better, didn’t it. And she’d just recognised that voice as well. Mystery solved as to why Sabrina had turned a curious shade of purple.
“She must be good,” Nick Davenport added. He was the host of the evening chat show The Davenport Report, and Sabs’s main professional rival. She was currently a presenter for Sunset Britain. Same time, different channel. No love lost. “She’s in everything, isn’t she?”
“She does give that impression.” The reply was so dry that she could imagine wisps of steam rising from ice. “It was a surprisingly variable performance from her tonight. She fumbled a line at one point, and for some reason decided to diverge out of maudlin sentiment into classic rock. Which, to be fair, was an improvement on the actual dialogue.”
Freddy glanced at Sabrina with a shade of irony.
“Even when she had her words straight, she was phoning it in. She’s losing her spark. Until a few years ago, she was still getting kiddie parts, and mostly took roles in musicals and drawing-room comedy. She danced and bounced her way from curtain to curtain, it was exhausting to watch, and audiences bloody loved her. Then she aged into adult characters, switched direction into pretentious bullshit like High Voltage, and obviously hated every moment of it. For some reason, she’s pursuing a determined line in the high-brow dramas, when she’d clearly rather be stamping about in puddles in Singin’ in the Rain.”
Carefully, Freddy set her glass on the table. She suddenly felt as if a hand had reached over and torn off her dress, leaving her sitting here naked and exposed. It was one thing for Akiko, who had known her most of her life and had always been incredibly intuitive, to see right through the real-life character she’d been playing for a long time now. It was very different to have that icy, impersonal voice slicing through all her shields and digging straight into the heart of her private thoughts and fears. Ford-Griffin had said plenty of unflattering things about her in print over the years, but she’d always been able to brush off a bad review. That was solely about her work on one distinct night, and it was often justified. Occasionally even helpful.
To her, that terse speech struck at the issue of who she was—who she’d thought she would be—as a person.
“Is that what you’re going to write in the review?” Nick asked.
“That would be the tactful way of putting it.”
“And the less tactful?”
“She’s an overexposed, chronically confused crowd-pleaser, who’s built a career riding on her family’s coattails. A twirl through her grandmother’s work was inevitable, and unfortunately this is probably a practice run. There’s a huge revival of The Velvet Room coming next winter, and regardless of suitability, the surname is promotional gold.” Drip, drip, went the tap of cynicism.
And realism.
“Half the world runs on nepotism,” Nick pointed out.
“Agreed. Wringing her connections dry shows common sense. Which is then smashed by the complete lack of critical judgment. She either has no idea of her own strengths, or is under someone’s thumb. I suspect both. You need grit to endure in this industry. If she has it, she’s doing an exceptional job of hiding it.”
Looking at Sabrina’s expression now, Ford-Griffin should be grateful there were no lethal weapons within reach of the booth. Akiko looked torn between indignation on Freddy’s behalf and alarm at the brewing thundercloud across from her.
A new group of people thankfully entered the pub then—judging by the glimpses of leotards under leggings and hoodies, it was the cast from The Festival of Masks—and the noise cranked up to the approximate level of monster-truck rally.
Freddy took a second to ensure that none of the turbulence in her mind leaked into her expression or words. “Put the claws away, kids. That was a short, sharp dose of painful accuracy. I have cashed in on the Carlton name and we all know it.”
And he’d made a direct hit with the rest of it.
“You’ve also worked your tail off. What a fucking twat.” Sabrina drummed her nails on the table and glowered over Freddy’s head.
“Who is he?” Akiko asked curiously.
“J. Ford-Griffin. The critic for the Westminster Post.” Freddy played with the rose in the glass on the table. She usually found flowers very soothing. Flowers and books: her happy places. “He’s the guy who presents all the arts programmes on TV. Expert in the history of theatre. You know. Short-haired Lucius Malfoy. Tall. Sarcastic. Ice-blond hair. Ice in general.”
Illumination dawned on Akiko’s face. She was an art history professor, she’d have seen him before; he produced multiple shows on all aspects of the arts. “Oh—yes, I met him when he was filming a documentary at the British Museum. He’s very...um...” Akiko always liked to pick out the best qualities in anyone she met. She was struggling. “Learned. I believe he has a PhD.”
“And a mind like a snake.” Sabrina made no attempt to speak quietly, so all gratitude to the boisterous dancers at the bar. “He was on the show once, and I had to interview him. Any question he didn’t feel like answering, he twisted to suit himself, and I ended up looking like I had no idea what I was talking about.” Sabrina looked peevish at the memory, although Freddy found it hard to imagine her sister ever feeling discomposed on camera. She’d never had a stupid professional stumble like Freddy had made tonight. “And,” Sabs finished ominously, “as we can see, he’s a mate of Nick Davenport’s.” She would probably use the same tone if she’d said, “And he likes to knock down old ladies in the supermarket.”
On the charge of being uncooperative in interviews, Freddy didn’t entirely blame Ford-Griffin. As much as she loved Sabrina and obviously supported her career—go team—she still had haunting memories of the one time she’d had to do a talk show interview. Incidentally, with Nick Davenport. Who was a right nosy bastard beneath the slick veneer. He’d tried to suggest she was the latest Other Woman in a co-star’s train wreck of a marriage. Not likely.
A spark of amusement returned as her sister visibly simmered. “I see inter-show relations are as cordial as ever.”
Sabrina said something that would send the curse-censors on her show haywire. “And see if I expend energy trying to coax a smile out of Malfoy next time they drag him on. Wanker.”
“The Westminster Post has always been a hard sell. His column is actually extremely entertaining.” When his remarks didn’t hit so close to home. “He strews the insults about with such panache.” Freddy wriggled out of the booth. “I’m going to get another round. Who wants?”
Akiko shook her head, but Sabrina held up her glass. “Another rum and coke, please.”
It took a full minute of elbow-ducking and handbag-dodging to manoeuvre her way to the bar, where the staff were flat-out and looking harassed. She was leaning forward and trying to read the new cocktail menu when the youngest bartender, a girl with artificially grey hair, made an unwise grab for a bottle of gin on a shelf high above her head. It slipped from her grasp as she lost her balance, and Freddy shot out her hand and grabbed it. She caught it inches before it could smash right in the face and expensive jacket of the man who’d come up beside her.
There was a moment of stillness, before she flipped the bottle upright and set it carefully on the counter.
Blinking, the bartender cast a quick look over at her shoulder at her boss. “Shit. Thanks. Ever think about trying out for wicket-keeper at Lord’s?”
“I’d be happy if I could just pull off that much dexterity on stage now and then. It would really—” Freddy turned to check on the target of the near-miss, and tilted her head as she finished “—widen my skill set.”
Ford-Griffin, in all his towering, broad-shouldered, frosty glory, asked another bartender for two whisky-and-sodas before he looked back at her. His eyes were almost black, in stark contrast to the very pale hair, and his gaze moved coolly from the gin bottle to her face. “Nice catch. Thanks.”
“Not a problem.” Freddy gave her own order to the grey-haired bartender, then propped her elbow on the bar and studied him. She’d forgotten he had that nose. When he was doing his presenting work, the TV cameras didn’t usually film him in profile. She suspected he didn’t give a shit about his looks, but if impressions were deceptive and he spent a lot of time gazing into mirrors like his friend Davenport, he was probably grateful he had the strong jaw to balance it out. An unexpected little flutter in her stomach took her by surprise. An oxytocin hit from the walking ice cube. Interesting life choices, body. “Apparently I have an affinity with all sorts of small objects. Bottles. Safety scissors.”
His brain didn’t require even a second of internal whirring to catch on. A small glint appeared behind the emotionless observation. “If it helps, there’ll be no references to predictability in the next review.”
“Because I was completely rubbish tonight?”
“You weren’t completely rubbish.” Definite emphasis on that completely. He pulled the whisky-and-sodas towards him and waved his credit card over the sensor. “Comparatively, you made Adrian Blair look like he was performing in a school hall nativity.” He slipped the card back into his wallet and picked up the glasses. “With the exception of the meander into Springsteen.”
Freddy handed over a note for her own order and dropped the change into the tip jar. All the staff looked like they deserved a few drinks at the end of their shift. “I’ll look forward to reading the review.” She stuck a straw in her sangria. “Especially if you put in the part about Adrian’s teeth.”
He looked at her for a second and then over her head towards their respective booths. He lifted an eyebrow.
She cheers-ed him with Sabrina’s rum and coke. “Nice to meet the man behind the most entertaining reviews I’ve ever had.”
And the most discomfortingly perceptive.
Without looking back, she returned to her seat, where in the midst of Sabrina’s risqué anecdote and frequent hostile glances at the next booth, she tried to forget all about J. Ford-Griffin and his insidious commentary.
And his inkwell eyes.
Copyright © 2019 by Laura Elliott