When the Curtain Falls

  ‘There we go!’ he said, flopping back down on his seat as he handed the phone back to the girl.

  ‘Thank you! Oh my goodness! Thank you! My mates are gonna be well jel!’ The girl wobbled up the carriage on her heels and unashamedly squealed with her friend, instantly checking the photos.

  ‘Are they always like that?’ Olive asked, delicately nodding at the young girls behind her who were still excitedly giggling.

  ‘No. Only sometimes.’ Oscar’s face still hadn’t returned to normal. There was something mechanical about his eyes and his smile.

  ‘How do you cope with it? I could never deal with that day in and day out.’ Olive brought her rucksack up from the floor, placed it on her lap and hugged it.

  ‘You just get used to it, I suppose,’ he shrugged, not being able to resist running his fingers along her shoulder.

  ‘That’s kind of sad,’ Olive said, glancing up. He was slowly melting back into the Oscar she knew and not the switched on, Display Oscar.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You’re used to people treating you as though they know you better than they do. It’s like they think you owe them something because, in a way… they’ve made you famous by watching you on the telly and buying tickets to the show you’re in.’

  ‘I guess. I’d never really thought about it like that.’

  ‘Just as long as you realise you don’t owe them anything, it’s fine.’ She smiled at him, but he was looking at his hand, twisting a silver ring around his middle finger with his thumb.

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘Why would you?’ She swivelled towards him a little.

  ‘Well, like you said, they’ve made me famous… haven’t they?’ He gestured to the teenage girls who now seemed to represent his entire fanbase.

  ‘Not at all. Did a group of fans get together and decide to give you the job in Love Lane when you were a kid?’ she laughed.

  ‘No… but —’

  ‘No – that’s all there is to it!’ She raised her voice and was a little shocked at the passion in it. ‘If not one single ticket is sold to a single performance of When The Curtain Falls… you still get paid, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Oscar nodded, still not looking at her, deep lines wrinkling his forehead.

  ‘Because your wages don’t rely on how many people come to watch you. Your wages rely on you turning up and doing the job.’ Olive noticed more and more people on the train honing in on their conversation.

  ‘But doesn’t me getting the job rely on how many tickets I can sell based on how many fans I have?’

  ‘That depends. Are you any good?’ she asked, more quietly. Olive could feel a rage burning in the pit of her stomach as she glanced over at the girls who were tapping furiously on their phones. That picture has probably already been seen by hundreds of people, she thought.

  ‘Well… yeah. I should hope so at least.’ He gave her the briefest of smiles.

  ‘Then that’s why you were hired. The fact you’ve also got a pre-existing audience is a bonus for the producers.’

  ‘A big bonus!’ He laughed.

  ‘But a bonus nevertheless! You’re a good actor, Oscar, and so you get hired. People with far smaller audiences, if any audience at all, still get hired in lead roles. Their careers don’t rely on having a fanbase. Why does yours?’

  ‘Because I have one?’ he shrugged.

  ‘But doesn’t that show you that it’s all a delusion? The only thing you owe your fans is a good performance on the night they’ve booked a ticket.’ Oscar looked at her but no words came. ‘Without your fans, granted, it may have taken you a little longer to work your way up the ladder but you’d still be doing this, Oscar Bright. And rightly so.’ She put a full stop to her point with a final nod, but she hugged her bag to her chest despite feeling hot and sticky in her thick cardigan. Oscar couldn’t help himself. With a gentle hand, he turned her face towards him and kissed her full on the mouth with a tenderness that made her whole body fill with heat. A million thoughts raced through her head.

  Are those girls watching? Is everyone watching? Does he care? Do I?

  She pulled away gently but kept the tip of her nose against his. She opened her eyes but his were still closed and she felt him take a slow and deep breath.

  ‘Everything okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ he nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For?’

  ‘Being so nice.’ He took one of her hands and looked down at it as he fiddled with her fingers.

  ‘I didn’t realise I was.’ She smiled, but an odd feeling crept over her. ‘Are those girls watching us?’ she whispered. Oscar glanced over her shoulder and sure enough, the girls were red-faced and staring.

  ‘Yeah, and their subtlety is astounding.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘It’ll be fine. They’re just kids. We’re getting off at the next stop anyway.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Stop looking so worried! What are they going to do? Come on.’ Oscar stood and hauled her up by her elbow, but her legs still felt like jelly after such an unexpected kiss. She tried to smile reassuringly at Oscar, but she couldn’t help but notice the two teenage girls furiously tapping away at their phones as they stepped off the train.

  Oscar’s place was only a short walk from the station and was not what Olive had expected at all. His ground floor flat was only slightly bigger than hers and certainly just as messy.

  ‘Cleaner doesn’t come until Monday,’ he lied, rushing ahead of her through the front door and picking up various items of clothing and empty cans of Diet Coke.

  ‘I hope you pay her well!’ Olive said, retrieving an empty can from the plant pot by the front door which Oscar took, sheepishly.

  ‘Living room’s through there. Make yourself comfy and please… excuse all the mess. I’ll be just a minute,’ he said. She guessed he was heading to quickly tidy his bedroom.

  ‘Wow, you really weren’t expecting company, were you?’ Olive laughed as she moved a pizza box from the sofa to the coffee table which had several mugs of coffee on it, some still half full. She slipped off her bag and cardigan and sank into the grey sofa. Within moments, a wave of fatigue hit her like a ton of bricks, every blink feeling heavier than the last.

  ‘Yeah, that sofa’s a little bit special, isn’t it?’ She hadn’t even heard Oscar come in.

  ‘I feel like I’m being hugged by a cloud.’

  ‘Do you want a drink? Tea, coffee, a Ginny Weasley?’ he asked.

  ‘A what?’ She laughed.

  ‘A Ginny Weasley!’ He smiled. ‘A gin and tonic.’

  ‘Love that. And no. I’m good, thank you.’

  He sat down next to her and repositioned himself a little closer to her.

  ‘Food?’ He leant in a little more.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘A kiss?’ he whispered, their noses touching and his lips almost brushing hers.

  ‘Hmm… maybe.’ She closed her eyes, but he didn’t kiss her.

  ‘Just maybe…?’ he breathed against her lips.

  ‘Definitely,’ she said and she kissed him, hungrily.

  Kissing at the theatre had always come with a cautiousness and a worry that someone would burst into their hiding place without warning. Often anything that sounded vaguely like an opening door or a knock and even calls over the crackling tannoy would make them jump ten feet apart. But in the private comfort of Oscar’s messy flat, such cautiousness was unneeded and Olive revelled in having him all to herself. He scrambled backwards, keeping a firm arm around her waist, carefully lifting her up from the sofa to a standing position. Oscar paused a moment, wondering whether she really wanted this, but Olive reached up once more to kiss him, this time her hands sliding up his chest underneath his T-shirt. Oscar couldn’t believe that he actually missed kissing her in the brief moments it took to pull his T-shirt over his head and as soon as it hit the floor, he lifted her off the ground and instinctively she wrapped her legs around his wai
st and tangled her fingers in his hair. Oscar carried her the short distance to his bedroom and, without turning the light on, he gently lowered her on the bed. Immediately her fingers were unbuckling the belt of his jeans whilst he fumbled at the buttons on the front of her dress.

  ‘Wait…’

  ‘You’ve changed your mind?’ he said, pulling away.

  ‘No,’ she laughed, and awkwardly turned slightly onto her left side. ‘There’s a zip.’

  ‘Well, that makes things easier.’ He unzipped the dress in one smooth glide and for a brief moment, Olive wondered how many women had been back to this room with him. Shhhh, she thought to herself. She felt her way back to his waist and unbuttoned his jeans then ran a finger along the inside of the waistband of his boxers. Oscar responded by lowering his head and kissing her neck.

  ‘I thought you were undecided,’ he said in between kisses, his breath hot on her collarbone.

  ‘I was.’ She smiled as she slid her other hand up his back and through his hair. ‘I make up my mind very quickly.’

  Oscar had fallen asleep within mere moments. Olive gently pulled the duvet up from the floor and wrapped it around her naked body, careful not to disturb Oscar’s sprawled limbs. As soon as she lay down facing away from him, he reached his arm around her waist and pulled her into him. When he was settled, she carefully reached her arm over the side of the bed and retrieved her phone from her dress pocket on the floor. She noticed that the screen was already lit up with several text messages. She quickly turned the brightness down and held it close to her face, squinting her tired eyes until the writing came into focus.

  Doug

  Just a heads up, lovely. Cat’s out of the bag and your Twitter feed is going crazy. I’m here if you need me.

  Mum

  You kept him quiet! I knew there was something going on between you. Mother’s instinct. I could just feel it!!! When can I meet him?

  LouLou BFF4EVA

  Erm… Excuse me?! Since when were you dating a celeb?! What happened to telling your best friend ALL your secrets. Now tell me… is he a show-er or a grower?!

  Olive thought her hammering heart was sure to wake Oscar, but he continued to snore gently in his sleep. He looked so peaceful, whilst she watched everything start crumbling down around her. Had she thought about it any longer she would have talked herself out of it, but her panic made her turn to Oscar and shake him.

  ‘Oz,’ she said. She could see his own phone light up on the bedside table next to him. ‘Oscar!’

  ‘Mmmm. What’s up?’ He rolled onto his back.

  ‘Something’s happened. Everyone knows!’

  ‘Knows what?’ He sat up quickly and flicked on the bedside lamp, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘About this! About us!’ She gathered up the duvet around her.

  ‘How?!’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t got that far yet. I’ve just got loads of text messages from people asking me about you.’ She scrolled through them all again, the words jumping out at her and each one making her stomach drop further and further towards the ground.

  Cat’s out of the bag. Something going on. Dating a celeb.

  Oscar snatched up his phone and, ignoring the many messages and notifications, opened up the Twitter app on his home screen. Olive watched him scroll frantically and felt guilty that a small part of her triumphed in people knowing. Whilst Olive could maybe do without her private life being splashed across the world wide web, she’d never wanted to keep secrets in the first place and she knew if she was being completely honest, she might even be a little relieved that whatever they were was no longer something she had to hide.

  But when she looked at Oscar she noticed his whole face had changed. Suddenly, his jaw was sharp and tense and the blue of his eyes was cold and uninviting.

  ‘Oh no. No, no, no,’ he mumbled. ‘Shit!’ He threw down his phone on the bed and knitted his fingers into his hair, thumping the back of his head against the wall behind him. Olive braced herself and looked down at his phone and there still on the screen was an impeccably clear photo of Oscar kissing Olive on the District Line train earlier that evening.

  ‘We can fix this,’ she said.

  ‘We can’t.’ She watched him shake his head and her heart thumped in her ears.

  ‘We can! It’s slightly blurry! That could be anyone!’

  ‘Olive…’ he said, grabbing his phone and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, searching the floor for his boxers. He stayed there for a moment, his back to Olive, and sighed before slipping them on. She wanted so badly to reach over and run a hand across his broad, freckled back, to let him know she was there for him to lean on, but there was already a distance developing between them.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got to call my agent.’ He left the bedroom without looking at her. She watched him walk away and she begged him in her mind to turn around, to look back at her, to show her some sort of kindness. Instead he opened the door to his living room and went straight inside without a moment to acknowledge that only moments ago they’d been the most physically intimate two humans could be. Now she felt like she was floating in a sea of bed sheets and he was standing on a distant shore, unable and unwilling to be close to her again.

  6

  Final Rehearsal

  The knock at her dressing room door couldn’t have come soon enough, but Olive didn’t dare turn around.

  ‘Come in!’ she said feebly, making herself look busy by tidying away the contents of her make-up bag that she’d left strewn across her dressing table.

  ‘Just me,’ Oscar said, poking his head around the door.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, glancing at him in the mirror, but even seeing his face for that brief moment made her stomach churn.

  ‘You disappeared last night.’ Oscar closed the door behind him and leant against it.

  Olive shrugged. ‘Did you really expect me to stay?’ She hadn’t wanted to leave Oscar’s flat but when he’d left her, naked and alone, in his room, she’d never felt more vulnerable and exposed. After waiting for him to come back for twenty minutes she’d had a sudden urge to get out of there as quickly as possible, so she got the Tube back to her home on the other side of London before midnight.

  ‘You know I had to speak to my agent. We had to figure out how bad the situation is.’

  ‘Damage control.’ She nodded.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been considered as “damage” before,’ she said, rubbing a hand over her heart, almost as if she were trying to ease the pain he’d just absentmindedly inflicted.

  ‘You know that’s not what I meant. This is a difficult situation that needs to be handled… delicately from now on.’

  ‘How bad is it?’ She leant on her elbows and covered her mouth with her linked hands.

  ‘Could be worse.’ He shrugged. ‘But it’s not ideal. Zadie’s furious. She retweeted the photo along with some pretty harsh comments.’

  ‘I know,’ Olive sighed.

  ‘You’ve seen?’

  ‘I’ve had to delete Twitter from my phone. Just for a little while. I’m not really accustomed to death threats from teenage strangers.’ Despite knowing there would be a lack of notifications, Olive still pressed the home button on her phone, just to make sure no more hateful words had wheedled their way onto the screen.

  ‘Oh, Olive,’ Oscar groaned.

  ‘Why is Zadie so angry anyway? You’re not together any more. Who you kiss and who you’re in photos with isn’t any of her concern, is it?’

  ‘Have you never seen pictures of an ex with someone else quite soon after a break-up and felt terrible?’

  Olive thought back to when pictures of Jason and Rosanna had surfaced. They hadn’t even been kissing, but even so, the pictures had made Olive’s stomach tie itself in knots.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I get that. I just don’t think I’d ever… tweet about it.’

  ‘That’s why I’m
now stood in your dressing room trying to make things up with you and I’m very glad I’m no longer with her.’

  ‘How’s it been for you? You’ve got triple the amount of followers I’ve got.’