“And also you lot aren’t very good at learning lines,” Mr Bott says considerably less dramatically. “So the less time you spend on stage the better.”
Miss Hammond scowls at him.
“Anyway,” she says brightly, turning to us and clapping her hands together, “the headmaster has decided he would like our performance to be part of the Open Evening for new potential sixth formers, so we have just a couple of weeks to polish it up. We can do it, guys!”
She gaily starts distributing wads of pink paper. I think she’s under the impression that if the play is baby pink, people are going to get more excited about it.
We all stare at each other.
I’ve never seen a more unlikely group of budding actors. There are just thirteen of us, thanks to what Miss Hammond is calling Dramatic Efficiency Blending. Mia is somehow playing Horatio and the priest, Noah is playing both the ghost of Hamlet’s father and Fortinbras (mortal enemies) and Hannah is some kind of Barnardo/Francisco/Marcellus/Reynaldo mash-up.
“It’s more about the spirit of the play,” Miss Hammond adds cheerfully. “We want inspiration and creativity, not a boring traditionalist view.”
“Shakespeare will be rolling around in his grave,” Mr Bott says, folding his arms laconically. “Screaming in anger and pain.”
“Let’s try and be positive, shall we?” Miss Hammond snaps at him under her breath. “Why don’t we all introduce ourselves briefly and tell everyone why we’re so excited to be here?”
There’s a long silence.
Then Nat leaps to her feet. “I’m Natalie. I’m here because I intend to be famous.”
She sits back down again.
“Erm, thank you,” Miss Hammond says encouragingly, then switches her gaze to me. “Next?”
“I’m Harriet Manners,” I say, standing up and waving awkwardly. “I’m here because …” of loyalty and an overwhelming sense of guilt. “I’m a big fan of Shakespeare. Did you know he invented 1,700 words, including eyeball, puking, assassination and fashionable?”
Nobody knew that: I can tell from the blank expressions on their faces.
Then it goes round in a circle as the confessions get more and more honest, like some kind of bizarre group-therapy session.
“I’m Mia,” Horatio simpers, flushing and standing on one leg. “And …” she glances at Ben and Noah. “I’m here because …”
She starts giggling.
“I don’t want to go home,” Kira intones, glaring at the clock. “I hate my parents.”
“Can my boyfriend come?” Raya asks eagerly, curling her eyelashes round her finger. “He’s in Upper Sixth but I’m going to get him a ticket. It’s really important he sees me play Ophelia. He likes arty girls.”
“I was unaware this was a matchmaking service,” Mr Bott says. “How encouraging for England’s dramatic future.”
“We don’t have to do homework, right?” Hannah checks, in a slightly panicked voice. “I mean, that’s what I heard.”
Nobody has the heart to tell her.
“Does this get us better grades in English?” Laertes asks.
Then there’s a shuffly noise as Christopher slinks from his place into the middle of the room with a grumpy expression. He’s wearing black from head to toe.
“I’m Hamlet,” he says gloomily. “And I’m a method actor, so if everyone could refer to me as Hamlet from now on, I’d appreciate it. I will also accept Prince or Your Highness of Denmark.”
Mr Bott rolls his eyes. “OK, Christopher.”
“Hamlet.”
“Christopher.”
“Hamlet.”
Everyone starts giggling, and then there’s a short pause as we all turn to look anxiously at the only remaining person in the room who hasn’t confessed yet.
She stares back at us calmly.
“I’m Alexa Roberts, but you all know that. I’m here because I’m really looking forward to helping bring this great play to life from behind the scenes.”
Miss Hammond starts clapping delightedly.
“Well, at least somebody has the right motives,” Mr Bott says drily. “I think that’s enough for today. Take the scripts home with you and try to memorise your lines over the rest of the week. We’ll see you next Monday. Alexa, you won’t need to attend rehearsals until later next week.”
“What?” Hannah says. “Oh, that is so unfair!”
“And have fun!” Miss Hammond chirps, ignoring her. “Remember, this is really a chance to let your stars twinkle!”
I put my hand up.
“Stars don’t twinkle,” I object. “They only look like they twinkle because the wavelengths of light are bent by the earth’s atmosphere before they reach us.”
Every other person in the room except for Nat shoots me a look of disdain.
“I think the scientific term is actually astronomical scintillation,” I add.
“Well,” Miss Hammond says perkily, totally unfazed, “this is a chance to let your dramatic stars astronomically scintillate, then!”
And she claps her hands together and shoos us all out of rehearsal.
spend the rest of the evening learning my lines.
This isn’t very hard, because Hamlet-Mark-Two is now ten pages long in total. The most famous, critically acclaimed play in the English language is now shorter than an episode of Hollyoaks.
My part now consists of the following:
“Aye, my lord.”
“I shall, my lord.”
“Good, my lord.”
Let’s just say that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are very obliging characters and probably don’t deserve to get stabbed to death on a boat offstage, which is what ends up happening to them.
Although, on the bright side, at least I don’t have to work on my death rattle. I have a feeling I wouldn’t be terribly good at it.
I’m just practising walking into a room, bowing and walking out again when my phone starts ringing.
“You know,” I say crossly, grabbing it out of my pocket and attempting a small Shakespearean hand flourish in the mirror, “all things considered, you should have let me stay in the cupboard.”
“Hello, my little trunkle-monkey,” Wilbur laughs.
I blink at the phone. I really have to start looking at the screen before I answer.
“Sorry,” I say, flushing slightly. “I thought you were—”
“It’s a common mistake, poppet. Nick Hidaka and I are basically twins, separated at birth by thirty years and 100 per cent genetics. I, too, have the cheekbones and jaunty pointed hips of a Renaissance statue.”
I smile fondly and sit on the end of the bed. Wilbur really, really doesn’t. “Am I in trouble, Wilbur? I’m so sorry. Did Brink go mad?”
“Au contraire,” he giggles. “Do you know how many models stand Brink up, poppet-kitten? None. Zilch. Zippo. They think you’re playing hard to get. They love it.”
What? I’ve never played hard to get in my entire life. “Um … did you tell them where I was?”
“Of course not,” Wilbur tinkles. “Can you imagine? ‘I’m sorry, but the fresh new face of Baylee has got lost at her own modelling agency’ isn’t the glamorous, sophisticated look Infinity tries to project.”
“So what did you tell them instead?”
“I said you had a terribly important and top secret last-minute engagement that may or may not involve Prince Harry.”
“Prince Harry?”
“You’re both ginger. I panicked.”
Elizabeth I, Mark Twain, Vincent Van Gogh, Emily Dickinson: all famous redheads. I need to start giving Wilbur little lists or Post-its or something.
Then I abruptly sit up a bit straighter.
“Hang on, Wilbur. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you got the job, my little phone-charger. The shoot’s next Tuesday: they’ve arranged it so you can do it after school. It’ll be awesmazing for your portfolio, chipmunk-cheeks.”
A confusing wave washes over me: happiness, p
ride, anxiety, guilt.
Fear.
The last time I did a fashion shoot, I only managed to survive because Nick was literally holding my hand all the way through.
It’s unlikely that this is what Brink have in store for me.
“Umm,” I say, twisting my duvet cover into nervous little knots. “Do I need to bring anything?”
Wilbur laughs. “Just the usual,” he says.
And then he puts the phone down before I can ask exactly what that is.
wait for Nat until Saturday lunchtime.
On Wednesday night, after rehearsals, her mum grounds her for snapping the heel off one of her Jimmy Choos, and Nat’s in such a terrible mood I don’t have the heart to make it worse.
Or – quite honestly – the courage. My best friend is terrifying when she’s angry. And it’s quite obvious at school on Thursday and Friday that she hasn’t got around to reading the lines.
So instead I tidy my bedroom and get a huge chocolate cake ready so that she can gorge her sorrows in a soothing environment. I’ve arranged fashion magazines in alphabetical order on my duvet and put all my shoes at right angles to the bed because I know it calms her down.
I’ve even got a PowerPoint presentation ready, just in case.
It turns out that milking a snake means extracting its venom and is incredibly dangerous, so after a bit more consideration I’ve taken that off the list.
Then I sit down with a book and wait.
And wait.
Finally, at five minutes to two on Saturday – just as I’m halfway through a cheese sandwich and chapter sixteen of Great Expectations – Annabel shouts up the stairs:
“Harriet? Sweetheart, Nat’s here to see y—”
And my bedroom door smashes open and Nat bursts in, hair and arms and coat and bag everywhere, like a hand-grenade made out of girl.
“What. The. Hell,” she yells loudly, throwing the bits of pink paper on the bed in front of me.
I stop chewing.
“I’m a skull? My acting career is going to start by replacing a prop they could have got out of the physics cupboard?”
“I think they keep the plastic skeleton in the biology cupboard, actually,” I say, putting my sandwich down. “Nat, I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Ugh,” she says, flopping on the bed next to me. I silently cut a slice of cake and hand it to her. “I’ve been through the whole script three times, Harriet. Apparently Chris just has to hold my face and talk nonsense at me. That’s not a role. That’s a really bad date.”
She rams a slice of chocolate cake into her mouth and starts chewing frantically. I rub her arm and gently nudge Grazia forward with one of my toes.
“You know,” she says with her mouth full, “this is why the British acting industry is in meltdown. No wonder Emma Watson has to play everything. They just don’t give anyone else a chance.”
“They’re fools,” I say fiercely, shaking my head. “Silly, silly fools.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Well,” I say, jumping up and pressing a button on my laptop. “I’m glad you asked, because I think there are some options that might be—”
“Maybe I could be Raya’s understudy. Maybe if she accidentally gets sick, I can be Ophelia and …”
Oh dear. Nat has been known to make people sick with prawns when she wants them out of the way.
“I’m not sure Raya’s allergic to shellfish, Nat.”
“She has to be allergic to something.” I lift an eyebrow at her. “Don’t look at me like that, Harriet. I don’t mean deathly allergic. Just a bit sweaty and shaky for a few hours. I’m not going to kill anyone.”
“I’m not sure you can monitor that scientifically enough for it to be morally acceptable.”
Nat sighs.
“So,” I continue, pressing another button so that a colourful image of a water slide appears on the white wall opposite, “I was thinking that …”
Nat’s chewing more carefully.
“No,” she says slowly. “Actually, it’s OK. I’m going to be a skull. I’m going to be the best skull that has ever existed. I’m going to be so great that somebody writes a spin-off all about Yorick and they ask me to play her.”
“Him.”
“Whatever.” Nat puts the chocolate cake down. “I’m going to make this play my own.”
I beam at her. “That’s the spirit,” I say, clicking another button. A huge photo of a teddy bear shines on the wall. “And if you need a Plan B, there’s always—”
“There is no Plan B,” Nat says darkly, staring at the wall. “There is only Plan A.”
I look at her in consternation. She’s starting to sound like the baddie in a Batman trailer.
“Well …”
Nat shakes her head. “I just have to throw myself into it, that’s all. We’ve got a rehearsal on Monday night and I’m grounded for the rest of the weekend, but on Tuesday can we do some research on famous skulls? It might help me get in the zone.”
“Oooh,” I say happily, shutting my laptop. This is more like it. “Definitely. There’s Geronimo’s skull: that got stolen from his grave in 1918. And Damien Hirst’s skull, covered in diamonds, and then the crystal skulls from the ancient Mesoamerican civilisation, thought to have had supernatural powers and …”
I stop. Sugar cookies.
“I can’t,” I say after a small pause. “I have, an … erm … photo shoot with Brink magazine.”
“Brink?” Nat says, picking up one of the magazines on my bed and holding it up. “As in Brink Brink?”
I nod guiltily. “I think you just say it once, Nat.”
There’s the tiniest of pauses while Nat goes white, then pink, then a faint purple, then a strange kind of green.
I watch my best friend change colour like Violet Beauregard from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with a sinking, guilty stomach. Ten years. Ten years of pulling on her hands and feet to make her taller, and with one stumble into a table full of hats I fall straight into her dream and leave her standing behind.
“I’m so sorry,” I say in a tiny voice. “It’s really bad timing.”
Nat shakes herself. “Don’t be ridiculous, Harriet,” she says, putting her arm around me and slowly returning to normal colour. “That’s amazing. I’m so proud of you.”
It’s suddenly difficult to swallow. This is what it’s all about. Not a play. Not a photo shoot. Not a boy or a girl or a skull or a cupboard.
A friend.
The kind that will happily hurt for you, and you’ll hurt for in return.
“But you could come with me?” I offer tentatively. “I mean, if you want to?”
I’m not sure if that’s a good idea or like eating steak in front of a starving lion.
Nat’s eyes widen. “Could I? Really? Are you kidding? You don’t mind?”
I beam at her.
“Of course I don’t, Nat. It’ll be great to have you with me.”
Because it will be.
Maybe somebody will be there to hold my hand after all.
ow, I know quite a lot about Shakespeare.
I know that:
• He used 31,534 different words to write 37 plays and 154 sonnets.
• 1,700 of those words were made up.
• He invented the expressions ‘wild goose chase’, ‘in a pickle’, ‘one fell swoop’ and ‘all of a sudden’.
• The only remaining example of Shakespeare’s actual writing is his own name …
• Which was never once spelled William Shakespeare.
None of this is of any help during our first rehearsal.
In fact, it almost definitely makes things worse.
“Now,” Miss Hammond says as we stand in an awkward, shuffling circle. “The key thing to remember about any play is that it’s not about the words.”
“Uh-huh,” Mr Bott says from where he’s reading a book in the corner. “Shame nobody told William Shakespeare.”
Miss Hammond gives hi
m a brief look.
“A play,” she says, turning back to us and swooshing her hands together, bracelets a-jangling, “is first and foremost about expression. About emotion. About feeling the story, in your heart, in your bones, in your very soul.”
“And then conveying that story with words.”
“Thank you, Mr Bott,” Miss Hammond says, turning her back on him. “So let’s put those silly words aside for today, shall we? It’s time to let ourselves be. To loosen up and let those beautiful emotions just pour out of us like sunshine.”
I glance briefly at Mr Bott.
I’m with him on this one. The sun’s power is about 386 billion billion megawatts. If it was coming out of us, we’d definitely know about it.
“I’m confused,” Mia whispers. “Does this mean we’re doing mime?”
“Everybody crouch on the floor!” Miss Hammond cries, spreading her recently henna-tattooed hands out. “Quickly!”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Nat snaps in a low voice. “These are brand-new trousers.”
“Hamlet doesn’t crouch,” Christopher complains, folding his arms. He’s still wearing a black jumper with a turtleneck. “Hamlet is royalty.”
“She said everybody,” Mr Bott snaps loudly. “Get on the floor immediately, Christopher, and stop referring to yourself in the third person.”
Christopher grumbles his way into a small huddled position. “No wonder I end up killing everyone,” he mutters under his breath.
Miss Hammond smiles enthusiastically at us.
“Now,” she says. “Curl up tightly. You are a bud from which a delicate flower is going to grow. Tap deep, deep into the soil and find the emotion of your character. Draw it into you like water.”
I glance across at Nat from where I’m tucked up with my chin on my knees. She mimes sucking from a straw like a little pet gerbil, and we both start sniggering quietly into our trousers.
“Now uncurl your leaves, slowly, and reach up to the light of emotional truth.”
Everybody starts awkwardly sticking their hands out and waving them around like fish fins.
“Miss,” Raya complains, “Noah’s leaves keep touching my leaves.”
“Keep your leaves to yourself, Noah,” Mr Bott says sharply.