When the Curtain Falls

  ‘You thought wrong, Oscar. I don’t think you quite grasp what it feels like to be kept hidden like you’re something to be ashamed of. And then, when you see a brief glimmer of it changing, a glimmer in the form of a kiss on a train when anyone could be looking… that glimmer is then not only snuffed out, but you have to go so far as sorting out damage control? To attempt to cover up any trace of… well… me.’ Olive put the key back in the lock of her door and turned it.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going in here to have a cry and you’re going to go out and have a drink with Tamara. You’re probably better off spending your time with her from now on. I’m sure she’ll gladly be your little secret.’ Olive walked into her darkened dressing room, slammed the door and, without even a thought to turning on the light, she slid down the back of the door onto the floor. Tears poured out of her and she clamped a hand to her mouth, knowing Oscar would probably be able to hear her sobbing.

  Oscar stood in the hallway, stunned, torn between waiting and trying to fix things or walking away, knowing there was little to be done. He could hear her faint sniffing and he knew nothing would dull the ache in his chest but he knew the best way to start was with a stiff drink or two.

  7

  Reawakening

  Olive scrubbed at her eyes with a half used baby wipe, making them even more sore from crying. She couldn’t believe how foolish she’d been. She had told herself not to get too invested; had warned herself that any kind of relationship with Oscar would be complicated. She had berated herself when she knew her feelings towards him were growing, and she’d held back when she wanted to tell him all the things she’d love to hear had he said them to her.

  ‘At least you know now,’ she said to herself. A single bulb around her dressing room mirror flickered twice. Olive switched the lights on and off again, hoping that old trick would sort it out, except when she turned them off again the bulb that had flickered was now on… even though she’d switched them off at the mains.

  ‘Weird,’ she whispered. She switched the lights back on and the singular bulb turned off again. ‘What the hell?’ Olive muttered and reached up to give the bulb a twist, thinking there was some loose wiring which could be fixed with a jiggle, but before her hand could even touch the bulb, it shattered into pieces. She retracted her hand quickly with a yelp as the pieces of glass scattered over her dressing table.

  ‘Okay, time to go,’ she said to the empty room, her heart beating wildly in her throat. In one swift movement, she grabbed her coat and her bag and ran out the door. She quickly turned the key in the lock and relished the feeling of being distracted from her boy troubles, even if it was due to being well and truly spooked.

  ‘Here’s my key,’ she said as she put it through the little hatch where Walter sat on the other side.

  ‘You’re late tonight, Miss Green,’ Walter said, hanging her key on its hook.

  ‘It’s Olive, please.’ She tried to smile but it felt stiff and odd. ‘And yeah. Didn’t feel like going home straight after rehearsals.’

  ‘Everything all right?’ Walter asked.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Just got some admin done. Taxes. That kind of thing,’ she lied.

  ‘Well, if you need anything, just let me know.’

  ‘Actually, now that you mention it, one of my bulbs has gone on my dressing room mirror.’

  ‘It probably just needs a jiggle.’

  ‘Actually, that’s the thing. I did try that but the bulb sort of… exploded.’

  ‘Oh,’ Walter said, and Olive couldn’t help but notice that he looked oddly worried. ‘Right.’

  ‘Gave me quite a fright!’ Olive tried to laugh but it sounded forced even to her own ears.

  ‘Well, no worries. I’ll get it replaced as soon as possible.’ Walter noted it down on the pad in front of him that already listed a couple of other odd jobs here and there around the theatre.

  ‘Thank you, Walter.’

  ‘Careful out there,’ Walter called as Olive pushed open the stage door which almost got pulled out of her hand by a fierce gust of wind. ‘Weather’s looking grim.’

  ‘Just my luck,’ she said, putting down her rucksack and shrugging on her hoodless coat. ‘See you Monday, Walter.’ She swung her rucksack back into place, huddled her neck in her coat’s collar and stepped out into the rain, closing the door behind her.

  Directly opposite stage door was a bar that always seemed to be bursting with people and buzzing with music and chatter no matter the time of day. Howard stood outside, a cigarette in one hand and his phone in the other. He looked up and saw her but didn’t smile. She gave him a slight wave, adjusting her heavy bag on her back and doing up the wooden toggles on the front of her grey coat. Howard returned the wave with his phone but glanced behind him through the window of the pub. When he looked back at her, his face was drained of colour and expression.

  ‘What’s up?’ she shouted as she ran across the street, her boots splashing through the big puddle that had collected outside the bar.

  ‘You’ve been in the theatre for ages. We all thought you’d gone home,’ Howard replied, almost nervously.

  ‘Just had some stuff to do.’

  ‘Are you staying for a drink?’ Howard took a large step to his left, blocking the entrance to the pub.

  ‘I don’t think so… why?’ she said, glancing behind his shoulder, but he took another step in front of her.

  ‘I just… I don’t think it’s a good idea you go inside.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  Just then Doug burst through the door, his beer sloshing over the side of the glass as he slammed it down on the large windowsill.

  ‘Babe, let’s go,’ he said, taking her hand.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Let’s just go and we’ll talk in a minute.’

  ‘No, Doug, tell me what’s going on.’ She snatched her hand out of Doug’s grip and it was then that she caught a glimpse of some of the cast through the window. They all seemed to have made a little circle and were looking at a central pair who were uncomfortably entangled.

  ‘Is that Tamara?’ Olive would have recognised her perfectly sculpted talons anywhere, even when tugging at the hair of the unfortunate man she happened to have her lips locked onto, like a leech sucking out his life and soul.

  ‘Yeah, it is,’ said Doug, taking her hand again.

  ‘Who’s she kissing?’ Olive felt her heart fall down a deep, dark pit of despair when she looked at Doug’s sad eyes. She looked back though the window and the light glanced off Oscar’s face as he drunkenly tried to wrap his arms around Tamara’s tall and bony frame, as though he didn’t know how to hold someone who didn’t fit so well in his embrace. His lips tried to find hers, but her tongue was too busy trying to reach his tonsils. It looked sloppy and awkward, but they didn’t stop. Why won’t they stop? Olive thought, but she didn’t cry. She felt numb, like her whole body had gone into shock, and even the icy rain that was hitting the back of her exposed neck didn’t seem to chill her.

  ‘Olive, stop watching,’ Doug said, squeezing her fingers.

  ‘I can’t,’ Olive replied, but her voice barely came out as more than a whisper.

  Finally, Tamara and Oscar broke apart and even though she could see Oscar’s slow drunken blink, how he fumbled for his beer as Tamara disappeared to the toilets, she couldn’t find anything to excuse his actions, as much as she wanted something to explain away the pain she knew she’d have to endure when the numbness had worn off. Oscar brushed back his hair, looking slightly dazed, and almost stumbled backwards into Sammy, who gave him a shove forwards. Olive watched Sammy mouth a few choice words at Oscar, and it was only when she pointed at the window directly at her that Olive realised Sammy knew she was there, watching the night’s sordid events unfold. Oscar’s eyes widened when they locked with Olive’s and his hands went to the sides of his head, like he was trying to stop his brain from spinning.

  ‘I need to go.’


  ‘Olive…’ Doug let go of her hand as she pulled away and stepped backwards into the road.

  She turned just as a car pulled into the street, its tyres racing through a puddle and throwing a fan of water up into the air, soaking Olive from the waist down.

  ‘Text me when you’re home safe!’ Doug called after her as she crossed the road, ran down the side of the theatre and turned right to walk along front of house.

  ‘OLIVE!’ She heard Oscar’s voice call out behind her and instinctively she slowed down, but she didn’t turn around. ‘Olive, please stop!’

  ‘We’ll talk when you’re sober,’ she called back to him over her shoulder.

  ‘Please don’t leave it like this.’

  ‘Me?!’ She whipped around, and Oscar almost bumped into her. ‘I’m not leaving it like anything, Oscar. You’re the one who’s decided to end this.’

  ‘I thought it was already over!’

  ‘We had an argument!’

  ‘In which you ended it! You told me to go off with Tamara!’

  ‘Which I see you took extremely literally.’ The bulbs around the theatre’s sign glared obnoxiously brightly and Olive was so glad there were no staff left inside to watch this spat between them.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t seem like anything right now, but my God, I’m sorry. I’m drunk and stupid and a total loser. You don’t need me in your life.’

  ‘Don’t you dare self-deprecate and think that’s going to get you an out of jail free card, Oscar. I don’t care how insecure you are. I don’t care if you think so little of yourself you need to get with every and any airhead who throws herself at you in an attempt to boost your self-worth. Nothing excuses the fact that you’ve spent the last month trying to hide me away and doing damage control when the world caught the slightest glimpse of me… and then kissed someone else in the middle of a bar where the whole of Soho could watch.’

  ‘I know —’

  ‘I AM NOT FINISHED.’ Olive’s anger came to the boil. ‘Not only have you kissed someone else so publicly, but you’ve kissed someone else in the cast! Do you realise how humiliated I am going to feel walking back into work on Monday morning, on opening night no less? And on top of all that, Oscar,’ Oh no, don’t cry, she thought, ‘you’ve confirmed my worst insecurity.’ Shit, she thought as a sob rose in her throat and the tears gathered in her eyes again. She quickly covered her face with both her hands, wishing she wasn’t there and that he wasn’t watching her.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Oscar’s T-shirt was soaked through from the rain, but the alcohol running through his body kept him from feeling the cold.

  Olive took a deep, icy breath. ‘I always wondered why you spent time with me instead of someone as beautiful as Tamara, but I had every confidence in myself, in my own personality. I knew that even though I don’t look typically like any of your ex-girlfriends, you were spending time with me because I’m fun. Because I’m clever. Because I can talk to you about more than the latest Love Island contestants and which celebrities have most recently broken up or got married or had a baby.’

  ‘I know, Olive. And you do make me laugh and —’ Olive held up her hand.

  ‘But none of that matters now. Because you’ve confirmed exactly what that voice in the back of my head has been saying that, up until now, I’ve been able to quieten. Now, you’ve proved that it doesn’t matter how fun I am, how much we can talk or how much I make you laugh, because I don’t look like Tamara.’

  ‘No, Olive, it’s not like that, I promise you.’ He took a step towards her and she took a step back.

  ‘And the very worst part isn’t even that you’ve made me feel like this. The worst part is… I let you.’

  Oscar looked at Olive and his drunken haze seemed to clear for just a moment. He saw her shivering in the rain, her pale face without make-up and her hair wet and slicked against her cheeks and he wanted nothing more than to sweep her into his arms and keep her warm and dry. To shelter her from all the hurt she was feeling, but knowing he couldn’t because all the hurt she was feeling could be directly traced back to him. And it was this thought, that he couldn’t kiss her and make this better, could probably never kiss her again, that made him realise he’d fallen in love with her.

  Olive looked at Oscar and started to feel the pain pour out of her heart and seep into her bones. He was so beautiful and looked so lost, but Olive knew she couldn’t forgive him, which hurt her more than what he’d actually done. She wanted nothing more than to find a way around this. To find a way to be able to look at him without remembering the image of him kissing Tamara. But she knew that would take far more time than she was willing to give. It was in that moment, that she realised he could never be hers, that she knew she’d well and truly fallen in love with him.

  ‘This, whatever this was, is over.’ The bulbs around the theatre’s sign all flickered for a few moments, as though too much electricity was passing through the current. And then with a loud crackle, everything went dark.

  Walter poured the hot water into his mug, pulled up his blanket across his knees, and settled in for the night in his small office. Although he’d much prefer a book, his eyesight was poor now and the more tired he got the more the words danced about on the page. So, on the recommendation of the actress playing Scarlett O’Hara in the last production of Gone With The Wind, he’d mastered the art of Netflix. Their selection of old movies was sublime, and he even tried a few movies that had been made in the last decade and, to his surprise, enjoyed them. His laptop was open on his desk, the opening bars of the overture to Oliver! blaring out of the speakers when suddenly everything went quiet and the film started to buffer. The little red spinning wheel taunted Walter and his tired old legs, and he said a little prayer that it would fix itself in the next few moments so that he wouldn’t have to get up and restart it. Then the screen went black and the lamp on the desk started to flicker.

  ‘Fawn?’ he whispered. ‘What’s got you upset?’ The bulb shattered with a bang and Walter couldn’t help but yelp.

  Walter.

  He was certain it wasn’t just the draughty theatre creaking, making his old ears hear things that weren’t there.

  Waaaalter.

  No, it was certainly his name called in a voice he knew only too well.

  But she only appears once a year, he thought. ‘Fawn? What’s wrong? What’s going on?’ Walter still hadn’t moved. Working in such an old theatre, knowing full well he was constantly surrounded by ghosts, it was rare that Walter felt scared or encountered the unexpected. Yet here he was, stuck to his armchair, his palms cold yet clammy, clutching his blanket up around his shoulders. From his chair he could see that a light had started to flicker somewhere in the corridor that led backstage. Whatever force was within the building was moving from light to light down the corridor and making its way towards Walter, each light shattering before it moved on to the next.

  ‘Fawn, please answer me?’ Walter’s voice was loud but audibly nervous. The light moved from the ceiling fixtures in the corridor to the small desk lamp at stage door. It started off as just the tiniest of glimmers, barely visible to Walter’s eyes but definitely there, wobbling in the dark. Then the light steadily grew brighter and brighter. The bulb cracked, and the light dimmed for a moment before it began to grow again, shining through the cracks in the bulb, a thread of gold light spun like silk. It spilled onto the floor and started to ravel itself into a tight ball that grew up and up and Walter could see that it was starting to take the shape of a pair of heeled shoes. The light began to ravel itself faster and suddenly there were ankles, legs beneath a long dress, wide hips, hands, arms, a cinched waist, slender shoulders, a delicate neck and before Walter knew it, there she was. Fawn Burrows. Standing before him, golden and glowing.

  ‘Fawn?’

  ‘It’s me,’ she laughed, looking at her own sparkling hands.

  ‘But how? How are you here? You can only come back once a year. On the anniversary of your death! Wha
t —’

  ‘Walter, I don’t know the rules. Something’s woken me up,’ she said, spinning, the hem of her dress fizzing.

  He let go of the blanket, his knuckles stiff and cramped. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to be here. I’ve never been here on any day other than the day I died. So, whatever’s brought me back…’ the flames in her eyes crackled, ‘it’s big.’

  8

  Right Place, Right Time

  Walter Brown was a city boy through and through. He knew how to weave in and out of people in crowds, which side streets were shortcuts and which coffee houses sold the best brew for the cheapest price. He’d grown up amongst the smoke and the soot and although he never could get the grime out from under his fingernails, there was no place else he’d rather be. London was, and always would be, home – but nowhere more so than Soho. The lights down Shaftesbury Avenue ignited a spark inside Walter that glimmered no matter where he went. It wasn’t that he wanted to be an actor, on stage or screen, even if he did spend all the money he had on trying to look like James Cagney. No, Walter was simply enamoured by the glitz and glamour of the theatre. It was a love affair that had begun as child, and one he knew would last a lifetime.