Chapter 12
TWELVE
Olly
Tarun takes in the winding cobbled backstreets of Covent Garden, which are more grey and ordinary in the dull March afternoon light than I’m used to.
‘It’s odd,’ I say, ‘Seven Dials not being decked out in Christmas lights. I’m normally here for my birthday in November.’
‘Where are you taking me first?’ he asks.
‘So, we’re going shopping, but I promise not for clothes or anything boring! This place is my favourite spot in London.’
Quickening my pace, the old-fashioned hanging sign of the shop comes into view about a hundred metres ahead.
‘Don’t wait for me!’ Tarun shouts after me, running to keep up with my long legs. ‘What shop could excite you this much?’ he adds, exasperated as he catches up.
‘Ta da! This one,’ I say, turning to present the small shop painted sage green with giant posters for West End shows in the window.195
The Green Room
The Showbiz Shop
‘It’s like they made it just for you,’ Tarun says, taking in the volume of theatrical knick-knacks on display before you even enter.
‘Come on, you’ll see what an amazing place it is.’
A wave of nostalgia washes over me as we enter the shop.
As soon as I first walked through the shop’s door aged ten and saw the giant Sunday in the Park with George poster hanging on the wall, I knew this was the shop for me.
There are shelves and shelves of paraphernalia from musicals: t-shirts, souvenir bears, scripts, coffee-table books, replica props and a whole room for musical cast recordings.
‘I didn’t know there were this many musicals,’ Tarun says, trailing his finger along the alphabetised cast recordings. They have every musical you could imagine, from Wicked to small Off-Broadway flops even some MT super fans wouldn’t have heard of.
‘Yeah, there’s more than the West End and Broadway you know, there are new musicals popping up all over the place.
Musicals aren’t just a genre, they’re an art form, so there’re musicals about pretty much anything!
You want a musical about all the people who’ve killed an American President? I can get that for you!’196
Tarun comes to ‘S’ and picks up the Sisyphus Rising cast recording.
‘Oh look, it’s signed by the entire cast,’ he says, flipping the packaging over to read the back. ‘And it’s got the full show recorded.’
‘You should get it!’
He wrinkles his nose. ‘It’ll be on Spotify, won’t it? I’m not even sure Mum’s CD player still works.’
‘It’d still be cool to have a signed, physical memento of your first West End show.’
‘It would,’ he says, looking torn. ‘I don’t think I have the money on me though.’ He sighs, making my attraction grow tenfold when he puts it back in the correct alphabetical spot between Sister Act and Six.
We carry on browsing the shop together, and I pick up a few niche bits and bobs I’ve had my eye on for a while.
Everything Was Possible – a book chronicling the original production of Follies, and a Billy Elliot magnet for Dad – because he’s obsessed with anything that’ll stick to the fridge, go straight in my basket.
Tarun has his back to me as I’m about to pay, flicking through a box of old playbills, so I dash to the CD section and pick up the Sisyphus Rising cast recording.
I wouldn’t normally splash out, but I could see he wanted a physical something to remember his first show by.
And it’s signed! It will be a great good-luck 197present for him tomorrow, especially if his nerves get the better of him.
I get my purchases smuggled into my bag just as Tarun’s head turns, eyes narrowed as he listens hard. ‘Is that … live singing?’
I listen too, hearing the unmistakable chorus of ‘This is Me’ from The Greatest Showman being performed with gusto. ‘Yup. That must be the stagey diner downstairs.’
‘What’s a “stagey diner”?’ he asks, but he doesn’t wait for my answer. He follows his ears to discover the door to the basement eatery that I always avoid like the plague when I visit the shop.
‘Tarun…’ I say, jogging after him down the stairs, but it’s too late.
He’s reached the bottom and found the source of my worst nightmares.
Singing waiters.
Tarun
All my senses are overwhelmed the moment we step through the door of the diner.
The seating booths are striped in impossibly bright red and white leather, the pattern running up the walls to give the impression that we’ve stepped into a plastic circus tent.198
The walls reverberate with the mix of customers chatting, scraping their plates of burgers and fries whilst the waiters deliver food to each table, all the while singing into handheld microphones at the top of their lungs.
A waitress spots us and breaks out into an impossibly manic grin, stopping singing her harmony line to hurry over, ready to offer us menus.
‘Don’t engage, Tarun,’ Olly whispers urgently in my ear. ‘It’s a trap.’
I look up at him, confused. This is the kind of place that should make him giddy, but he looks petrified.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, the server drawing ever closer.
‘I … I have a very rational fear of enthusiastic strangers making eye contact as they sing at me. Don’t you?’
I can’t believe it. I’ve found the one musical-theatre activity that cringes out Olly Redmond, the boy who enthusiastically loves all things theatrical.
‘We’ll have a table for two,’ I say to the waitress before he can stop me.
‘Fabulous!’ she sings. ‘Follow me!’
I follow her through the chaos of the dining area, Olly tapping me nervously on the shoulder the whole way.
‘Don’t make me do this… Even if you want to have your soul stared into as they sing “Seasons of Love”, we’ve already eaten and it’s like thirty quid for a tiny cheeseburger and fries!’199
But I ignore him, enjoying how uncomfortable he is.
I’ve seen Olly confident and bombastic; I’ve seen him sensitive and thoughtful.
This might be the only chance to see how he is when he’s rattled and uneasy.
Seems only fair when he’s witnessed me at every emotion – from panicking highs to anxious lows – this week.
‘Here you go, boys,’ says our host, pointing us to a table for two in the corner before turning to look straight at Olly as she joins back in for the final held note of the current song. He looks so embarrassed I can’t stop giggling as she step ball changes away from us to deliver a burger.
I sit down while Olly stands, dismayed. ‘You really want to suffer through this?’
‘Aye! I can’t believe you don’t! You’re meant to love everything musical theatre!’
He crosses his arms over his chest as he reluctantly sits opposite me.
‘This isn’t musical theatre, Tarun. It’s a torture exercise for out-of-work actors and anyone who likes listening to any songs that don’t feature on a Now That’s What I Call Musicals compilation album at the bottom of a bargain bin. ’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ I challenge him, wanting to get to the bottom of why this is where he draws the line of cheesy musical theatre.
‘It’s not about telling a story when they perform.
The poor actors have to sing the biggest, most well-known 200songs with a money note at the end if they want to earn decent tips.
Because I bet you, they’re being paid the same minimum wage as any other restaurant.
Soon, our host will have to sing “Don’t Rain On My Parade” to an awful backing track where the trumpets sound like kazoos, all while serving food, wiping up spills and begging us with her eyes to give her five-pound notes. It makes me feel all icky.’
I stop my giggling, because they’re all valid points, but seeing how shifty he is still amuses me.
‘Sooo … wanna split a milkshake?’ I ask, flicking through the menu.
He’s right that the food prices are extortionate, like every theatre-adjacent food item has been this week, but I can spring to a ten-pound shake if he’s willing to share.
It’ll be worth the money just to extend his agony. ‘I’ll pay.’
‘Fine,’ he grumbles, scrunching up his nose. ‘Biscoff?’
I nod. ‘Exactly the one I had my eye on.’
It takes us a few minutes to order, because our host is busy singing the exact song Olly predicted about not letting anyone rain on her parade.
‘See!’ he scoffs, playing up how disgruntled he is. There’s a twinkle in his eyes as he rolls them.
The milkshake arrives and it’s epic – a collection of speculoos cookies poking out of the mountain of whipped cream they’ve put on top. The waitress hands us two 201straws, and pirouettes away to join in with the staff’s performance of ‘Cabaret’.
Our fingers brush, for no more than a second, when we both go to put our straws into the shake, trying not to disrupt the careful construction of the cream and biscuit topping.
‘You can have the first taste,’ Olly says, gesturing for me to take the first sip.
‘I don’t know if the cream’s going to be strong enough to hold up the biscuits much longer,’ I say, watching as gravity kicks in and cream starts leaking down the side. ‘I say we both dive in and get drinking.’
‘Sure?’ he asks, cheeks turning pink for some reason, but I nod, keen to avoid a mess for our overworked server to clean up.
We both lean to our straws, faces only inches apart as we take our first sip of the thick drink.
Both of us look down at the drink rather than across at each other.
That would be a bit … intimate. Like Lady and the Tramp but with an overpriced milkshake rather than a spaghetti-meatball dish gifted to us by an over-friendly Italian chef.
But then we both do glance up, eyes meeting across the drink.
And it’s awkward, neither of us sure if it’s wrong to look at the other while we’re sharing a drink.
It would be weirder though to look away now that our eyes have found each other…
And so, I take another sip, taking in 202his hazel green eyes.
There’s no other boy I’d feel comfortable enough to do something like this with.
But … friends do this kind of thing. Olly’s a good friend and that’s fine.