Then Nat and I make our journey home.
“You know,” she says thoughtfully as we finally reach the bench on the corner at the end of my road, “that wasn’t what I thought it would be like at all.”
She’s been quiet the whole way: undoing and redoing the laces on her boots for no apparent reason.
“Me neither,” I say with feeling.
I’m not sure what I expected from the glamorous world of modelling this time, but it definitely wasn’t to be the most colourful portion of Five A Day.
“I mean,” Nat says, frowning, “I’ve wanted to model forever, Harriet. Like … always. But, actually being there … I’m not sure I could do it.”
“Oh, you could,” I say vehemently. “It’s not exactly rocket science. Apparently a human can only express four basic emotions, and modelling doesn’t involve any of them.”
She uses one of them up to smile at me.
“OK, I’m not sure I’d want to do it. This sounds weird, but it feels like something’s kind of … gone. Evaporated. Or died, somehow. I feel lighter than I have in ages. Months. Years.”
I assess her for a few seconds.
“I think you’re the same weight, Nat. Possibly heavier: I’m afraid that doughnut will have digested by now and gone straight to your hips.”
Then I stick my tongue out.
“Whatever. Yours has gone straight to your stomach.” Nat points at the jam smear still on my jumper and laughs. Then she grabs my arm and leans into my shoulder. “Thank you. I mean it.”
“What for?”
“Showing me what I couldn’t see before.”
And with a little kiss on my cheek, Nat smiles a little bit harder and bounces back to her house with her shiny dark hair bobbing behind her.
ehearsals start in earnest the next day.
Let’s just say that Mr Bott and Miss Hammond obviously had an altercation in the staff room, because, when we meet the next afternoon, our drama teacher is very quiet and our English teacher is sitting on a chair in the centre of the room with his arms crossed.
Traditionally, tribes all over the world have used ornamentation to publicly declare their social standing. From the drastically reduced quantity of necklaces Miss Hammond has on, it looks like she’s decided to do that too.
“Now,” Mr Bott says sharply, “would I be right in assuming that you’ve loosened up enough to start actually practising Hamlet?”
A groan goes round the room.
“Remember,” Miss Hammond says, flapping her arms, “it’s been edited down significantly.”
“Yes,” Mr Bott says. “And I’m sure if Shakespeare had seen your auditions, he would have done that too.” He sighs. “Why don’t we start with ‘Long live the King’ and go from there?”
We proceed to limp, jerk and stagger our way through Hamlet with such wooden rigidity, I think we may have harnessed our inner trees a little bit too enthusiastically.
In the meantime, I get on with some physics revision.
There’s only so much focus you need to say, “Yes, your Majesty” every few pages, and I use the rest of my time to learn about the varying lengths of electromagnetic waves.
Mr Bott doesn’t like it, but he can’t really say anything: Yorick is reading Vogue and Ophelia keeps looking in her mirror “to see what shape my lips make when I talk”.
Finally, it’s Nat’s turn.
I put my book down and look up curiously.
Christopher stands up and walks in circles a few times, with his white school shirt sticking out from under his black jumper like an untidy penguin. Then he kneels down on the floor where Nat is patiently lying, perfectly still.
“Alas, poor Yorick,” he says in a pained voice to Mia, holding Nat’s face gently in his hands. “I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.”
And then he bends down and kisses Nat on the lips.
I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. Especially not somebody pretending to be dead.
“What the …!” she shouts, jumping up and vigorously rubbing her mouth on her jumper sleeve. “That is not in the script!”
“I was improvising,” Christopher shrugs. “I was feeling the moment.”
“I’ll improvise your face,” Nat yells, physically launching herself at him. “I’ll improvise it into next week!”
Miss Hammond quickly steps between them.
“OK. Christopher, I don’t think that Hamlet would go around kissing skulls just dug out of the ground, do you?”
“He might,” Christopher says obstinately. “We don’t know what people from Denmark did four hundred years ago.”
“I will bite you,” Nat shouts, straining forwards. “Touch me with your lips again and you will lose them.”
“Fine, fine,” he says, holding up his hands. “A pity though. You’re clearly not a committed artist like me.”
Nat glares at him. “Oh, you need committing all right, buddy,” she growls, and then slowly lies back down on the floor once more.
Christopher clears his throat and continues with his monologue.
Then Raya is carried clumsily in by me, Hannah, Noah and Rob, each clutching a shin or a wrist or a bit of shoulder. It doesn’t seem to bother anyone that – thanks to character blending – the pallbearers at Ophelia’s funeral are three dead people and a priest.
We plonk her awkwardly on the ground to an unmistakable “Owww!” from Hamlet’s dead girlfriend.
“Lay her i’th’earth,” Max says stiffly. “And from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring.”
“Sweets to the sweet,” Kira agrees in a bored voice, throwing bits of tissue at Ophelia in lieu of flowers. “Farewell.”
Then it all kicks off: Hamlet and Laertes have a bit of a scuffle in the grave, which results in Ophelia getting her finger trod on and we drag her off to a corner while she’s still complaining, so that the final showdown can commence.
Ten minutes later, there’s a pile of dead students lying on the floor with varying levels of commitment to no longer existing.
Ophelia’s filing a nail, Laertes and King Claudius are whispering to each other, Gertrude’s foot keeps twitching and Hamlet’s clutching his own throat, which I’m pretty sure wouldn’t be possible in the last throes of rigor mortis.
I’ve been forced to lie down too, even though I point out quite crossly that I’m supposed to be on my way to France right now, and it seems unlikely they would bother to drag my body all the way back to Denmark just for this scene. I’d definitely have been thrown overboard.
“It adds impact,” Miss Hammond whispers. “The more bodies at the end, the sadder it will be. Actually,” and she waves in Rob, Hannah, Noah and Nat, “you might as well come and lie down too.”
“I’m not even dead, Miss,” Hannah complains. “I’m, like, one of the only survivors.”
“Nobody will remember that,” Miss Hammond assures her.
Hannah sighs and lies down with the rest of us.
“Oh, I DIE,” Christopher shouts, choking on his own hands. “The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit. The rest is silence!!!”
And he rattles, flops around a few times like a fish dragged out of the sea, and then lies down with his hand over his face.
“Yes,” Mr Bott says flatly, standing up. “The rest is silence, indeed. We can only hope. Thank you, everyone.”
There’s a slow clapping from the other side of the room and I sit up just in time to see Alexa, sitting in a darkened corner, like some kind of enormous, too-intelligent spider.
And not in a cute, Charlotte’s Web kind of way.
I can imagine her spelling out words in her web, but they definitely wouldn’t be encouraging ones.
“That was terrific,” she smiles as most of us slowly sit up and rub our eyes. I think Noah’s actually fallen asleep. “I’ve got so many great ideas already for how to enhance this production.”
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how she could possibly make it worse. But I have a feeling that she’s going to give it a good shot regardless.
She’s reliable like that.
“See you there,” Alexa says, bowing low. “Especially you, Harriet Manners.”
And as she backs out of the room, still making fixed eye contact, I can’t help thinking I should probably be on a boat to France in real life too.
When Nick rings me half an hour later, the conversation doesn’t go quite as he expects it to.
“I’m sorry, Harriet,” he says in a low voice. “I’ve been called to Milan for a shoot on Monday, which means I’m not going to make it back in time for your play. I’m totally gutted.”
There’s a long silence.
“I’ve tried really hard to get out of it,” he continues, “but I’m on contract and there’s nothing I can do and …”
He stops.
“Are you OK?” he checks. “You haven’t smashed your phone really quietly, have you? Or eaten it?”
I laugh.
I’ve been quickly weighing up the pros and cons of not having Nick there to support me versus not having Nick there to see me humiliated.
Especially you, Harriet Manners.
Yup: that does it.
“Nope,” I decide happily. “In fact, I’m elated. Ecstatic. Overjoyed and tickled pink. Like a dog with two tails. As pleased as punch.” I pause. “Or something a bit less rude,” I amend quickly. “Should I start that again?”
“Yes please,” Nick laughs. “I’m assuming your dad will make a video?”
Yes: it’s safe to say my dad will be making a video. He made a video of the dog getting a haircut last week. There doesn’t seem to be much quality control going on at the moment. Thus the joys of unemployment.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Then I’ll look forward to watching that when I’m back. We can make an evening of it.”
I think about it briefly.
“Sure,” I lie.
The National Security Agency managed to destroy years’ worth of telephone and internet records. I can definitely destroy an incriminating video in the time it takes Nick to fly home from Italy.
he Hamletians – as Miss Hammond has started calling us – practise for the rest of the week.
We practise at lunch, at break-times, after school and before registration. I hear Noah and Mia running through their lines in the corridors outside biology, and Raya muttering in a decidedly heartsick manner in the school canteen.
With some prodding, we even come in, reluctantly, on Saturday afternoon for a quick dress rehearsal as well.
And – to my total surprise – we slowly get better.
I mean, none of us is going to get a call from the Royal Shakespeare Company at any stage in the near future, but we’re not that bad any more.
A slug has its bottom in its head. Let’s just say you make the best of what you’ve got.
By the time the open evening itself arrives, the level of general excitement is dangerously high. Ben and Noah keep fist-bumping each other outside the hall, Christopher is skulking around, darkly muttering, “Frailty, thy name is woman!” at every girl who walks past, and Max keeps lobbing a little balloon of red food dye into the air.
“You know,” he says chirpily, catching it again, “I’m actually quite looking forward to getting stabbed to death now.”
Even Nat’s spirits have lifted enormously.
She turned up on Saturday with a big bundle of clothes: a beautiful white, floaty dress for Raya, a full length blue dress for Kira, a range of soldier’s jackets and waistcoats for the boys and a velvet coat for me.
“Where did you get these?!” Miss Hammond asked incredulously as Nat held up her own black, shiny catsuit.
Nat shrugged. “Charity shops, sewing machine, Mum’s attic.”
I looked again at the dress Raya was spinning around in, which was almost definitely Nat’s mum’s wedding dress. It was probably a good thing my best friend was dead throughout the play, because she wouldn’t be alive for long after it either.
While we get ready in an empty girls’ changing room, I take a moment to glance sideways at my best friend.
Nat’s cheeks are getting pinker by the second, her eyes are getting brighter, and her lips are getting more and more rigid.
She managed to convince Miss Hammond that a “subtle skull look” was “the best way to approach this, stylistically,” and now has slightly pale foundation and dark, smoky eye make-up. With her catsuit, she looks less like the cranial bone of somebody’s head and more like Sandy from the final scene in Grease.
Which I’m guessing is kind of the point.
I study her face suspiciously. The last time Nat had an expression like this, we were seven and she had just let the class hamster out of the cage because our teacher wouldn’t let her take it home for the weekend.
“What are you up to, Natalie?”
Nat tosses her head. “Huh?” she says, looking at a space somewhere behind my head. “Hmm? What? What on earth do you mean?”
Then she opens her eyes unnaturally wide.
Yup: she’s up to something. That’s just what she looked like ten minutes after Bobby was found in the car park outside, hiding under a car tyre, nibbling his paws anxiously.
“You’re not planning on … doing anything, are you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nat says indignantly, and stalks back over to the mirror to fluff up her hair. “Really, Harriet. What kind of girl do you think I am?”
I’m just trying to find a way to politely answer that question when there’s a loud scream from the corridor.
“No no no no no no no,” somebody starts shouting. “No no no nononono. This can’t be happening.”
Nat and I glance at each other and then run quickly into the hallway. Within seconds, every member of the cast is standing in a horrified, silent circle.
“Oh, good gracious!” Mr Bott says, putting his hand across his mouth.
Raya is sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor: white dress rumpled around her, phone clutched tightly in her hand. Her hair is everywhere, her eyes are pink and swollen and her cheeks are wet and shiny.
“No,” she keeps murmuring at her lap. “No. No. No.”
Miss Hammond appears in a flurry of lace and beads and quickly bends down. “Raya,” she says. “Sweetheart, what’s happened?”
Raya looks up: enormous deer eyelashes soggy and sparkling. “H-h-h,” she starts. “H-h-h.”
“Take a deep breath,” Miss Hammond reminds her, patting a jangling hand on her shoulder (the bracelets have reappeared in force for tonight). “Let those emotions wash over you like a cleansing tide.”
Raya nods and closes her eyes. “H-h-h-he dumped me.”
Then she throws her head back and starts howling at the ceiling.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Mr Bott says in genuine relief. “I thought it was something important.”
Miss Hammond scowls at him, but not before Raya has jumped off the floor. Her eyes are wild, and there appears to be a bit of face paint stuck in her eyebrow. “You don’t understand because you’re a man,” she screams at him. “My heart is broken! I will never recover! Never!”
The circle of concerned onlookers is slowly starting to move away, the way you’d inch backwards if you discovered a velociraptor in your bathroom.
One of the boys appears to be whistling quietly.
“Well …” Mr Bott says, clearing his throat. I’ve never seen anyone look more uncomfortable. “That’s not actually true, Raya. You’re fifteen …”
“Sixteen.”
“Exactly. And you’ll … erm … love again.” He clears his throat. “Probably. I mean, that’s not guaranteed, but probably.”
Raya’s head drops and she starts wailing into her lap again.
“Now,” Miss Hammond says, bending down next to her and giving Mr Bott the look of death. “Come on, Raya. You know what r
eally makes a man regret dumping someone? Seeing them on stage looking beautiful and word-perfect.”
There’s a little sniffle while Raya considers this. “I do look quite pretty, don’t I?”
“Absolutely,” Miss Hammond says a little too fiercely. Humans shed on average 121 pints of tears in a lifetime and Raya’s face looks like it’s tried to get them all out of the way at once. “Be strong, and go show him what he’s missing. Do the play.”
Raya tips her head to the side and then wipes her nose on the sleeve of Nat’s mum’s wedding dress.
“OK,” she says quietly, standing up on wobbly legs like a toddler. “Do you think it’ll make him want me back?”
“Of course,” Miss Hammond says after a few seconds of hesitation. In fairness, Ophelia’s not exactly the most attractive Shakespearean heroine: insane girls who drown themselves while singing about flowers never tend to be.
“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Raya says, lifting her chin slightly.
Everyone takes one cautious step closer.
“Right,” Mr Bott says, abruptly. “Disaster has been averted. We’ve got twenty minutes before everyone starts turning up, so let’s make the most of them, shall we?”
And the countdown begins.
ast time I was on a stage was in Moscow.
It was an old, expensive gilt theatre, with a plush red carpet, velvet seats with gold carvings and an enormous crystal chandelier hanging from an ornate ceiling. There was a catwalk running down the middle of a circular room, a plethora of thin, beautiful, semi-naked Russian models running around backstage, and my father, embarrassing me from a seat at the back.
At least some things never change.
As I stick my head out from behind the dusty green curtains on the wooden, scratched school stage and stare at the growing crowd accumulating on little plastic chairs, I can see my dad: visible like a flame in the night.
Less than two per cent of the world have red hair and in situations like this it can be quite handy.
“Hey, Harriet!” he shouts, standing up and prodding Annabel. My stepmother is wearing her navy blue suit, and there appears to be some kind of pizza balanced on top of her bump. “She’s there, Annabel!” he shouts, waving energetically. “Can you see her? Sticking out from behind that curtain!”