Chapter 50
Rehearsals intensified as the days crept closer to opening night.
What had once felt tentative now carried urgency; voices sharpened, movements tightened, cues were called louder and more often.
Bridie threw herself into it with ferocious energy, as if the show were the only thing keeping her upright.
She prowled the stage, correcting blocking, reworking dialogue, sketching notes in the margins of her script until the pages curled and smudged beneath her fingers.
Grief had always been her fuel. Loss, betrayal, disappointment – she knew how to turn them into art.
But something was wrong.
Props were moving.
A chair that should have been stage left appeared centre. A table vanished entirely, only to turn up hours later in the wings. Costumes were misplaced. Marks on the floor were rubbed out.
At first, Bridie assumed it was the chaos of the rehearsals – too many people, too little time. Then the lights flickered. Once. Twice. Again.
Her jaw tightened. She’d told Jack to call off whoever he’d hired to sabotage the production.
She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him for the last two weeks, not since the evening of the first impromptu auditions when so many people had joined her and her friends from Cobblers Yard to finish painting and cleaning the theatre.
Jack had denied that he had anything to do with it, but she didn’t believe a word that came out of his mouth. The thought of his betrayal gnawed at her, bitter and relentless. Perhaps he’d decided that if he couldn’t have the theatre, no one could. Perhaps this was his punishment, his revenge.
She poured herself another glass of wine in the stage wings, the bottle stashed behind a prop, hoping no one would notice.
‘It’s only a little glass,’ she said lightly when one of the cast members glanced over. ‘Just a tipple to conquer stage fright.’
Her friends exchanged looks when her back was turned, their concern deepening with every rehearsal. Who did she think she was kidding? She didn’t suffer with stage fright. They were afraid she was going to repeat what had happened on the London stage and have a meltdown in front of everyone.
The show was coming together, but Bridie was coming undone.
During a break in the rehearsal, she slipped into the foyer and made a call. ‘Yes, you remember me? I wondered if there was a casting agent who would like to come and see me in a local show in Suffolk.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I want to return to working on the London stage.’ She paused, listening to the casting agent, getting irritated.
‘Yes, I know people have long memories, but I just want another chance. Look, I’m staging a play in my home town, so if you or another casting agent would just come and see me perform . .. I won’t let you down, I promise.’
Bridie eyed the wine glass in her hand and winced, hoping she didn’t sound tipsy down the phone. ‘Yes, I can give you the date.’
She didn’t notice Oliver at first, leaning against the doorway, until she got off the phone.
‘You’re really doing it,’ he said. ‘You’re really going back to London.’
She closed her eyes. ‘Why would you care?’
‘What do you mean? I’m your friend.’
She flinched. ‘After what happened at the flat, I’m surprised you even want to be my friend.
’ Her words came tumbling out, sharp and self-lacerating.
‘I’m a horrible person, Oliver. I got drunk.
I led you on. I embarrassed myself, and you, just because I was lonely and upset over someone who’d betrayed me. ’
In between their jobs, and getting wrapped up in rehearsals, in the evenings and weekends, they hadn’t spoken about that night a fortnight earlier in her flat.
She laughed, a brittle laugh. ‘Whereas you … you were the perfect gentleman.’
The memory rose unbidden – Oliver walking her home, tucking her in, gentle and unwavering even as she’d fumbled and crossed lines. She wished she couldn’t remember that night.
‘You’re on the rebound, Bridie,’ Oliver said softly. ‘Not thinking straight. And I knew it wasn’t me you wanted.’
The truth landed with painful clarity; She wasn’t rebounding from Julian.
She’d thought she was rebounding from Jack.
The love of her life. That’s what Oliver clearly thought too.
But was she? Bridie stared at Oliver seeing him, really seeing him for the first time not as a friend, but as what he could be, if only she’d let go of the past.
But would he want her now, after that night, when she’d embarrassed herself and behaved abysmally towards him?
‘I should never have come back,’ she said miserably.
Reggie’s warning echoed in her mind – don’t hurt Oliver. And yet she had. Not deliberately, but carelessly, wanting comfort, wanting a friend while Oliver wanted more. And always had.
They weren’t children anymore. Time had changed everything.
Jack was married. The old easy triangle might have tipped into something else entirely – if her heart hadn’t been so firmly anchored in the past and her relationship with Jack.
But what did her teenage heart know of love?
Was it real? What if she’d kept telling herself that Jack was the one when the truth had been right there all that time; Oliver had been there for her, always, and she’d just never seen it, seen him, until this moment.
‘Is that why you’re leaving?’ Oliver asked quietly. ‘Because of Jack?’
And in that moment, she knew it wasn’t because of Jack.
Oliver. He was kind, steady, loyal. He would never betray her. But love didn’t bend to logic, and she knew she could never give him what he deserved. Not because she couldn’t love him back. She knew now she could, she did. She always had.
But Jack would always be there between them. Oliver would never believe her now, even if she told him that in her heart she knew he was the one she loved.
‘What is it?’ Oliver asked, searching her face.
Tell him. Tell him how you feel before it’s too late, and you lose him forever.
‘Oliver … I—’
‘Not again!’ Oliver snapped suddenly.
The lights plunged them into darkness for the third time that evening. A groan rippled through the cast.
‘That’s it,’ Oliver said, already moving. ‘I’m going down there. If I catch him—’
‘Don’t,’ Bridie snapped, stomping her foot like a petulant child realising this was a case in point – Jack coming between them yet again ‘He wants a reaction. He’ll get bored when he realises it’s not working.’
Everyone had been told the truth now – there was no ghostly presence there, just Jack sabotaging the play.
‘I’ve still got to go down to the bloody fuse box again!’ Oliver said in the darkness as he got out his phone to light the way.
‘Oliver, turn the electricity back on, and if he’s there, just ignore him.’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’ Bridie stamped her foot again. Exhausted, raw with emotion, the wine going to her head, she said, ‘I can’t bear another argument.’ She turned and ran out of the theatre, into the night.
The mist on the promenade hit her like a wall. Thick, cold, rolling in from the sea, swallowing sound and distance. She ran blindly, momentum carrying her forward—
Too far.
A hand caught her arm.
She gasped as she was pulled back from the sea wall, heart hammering. For a split second, she saw her – a woman, pale and indistinct, eyes full of something like sorrow.
Then she was gone.
Oliver burst through the door moments later. ‘Bridie!’
She clutched his arm. ‘Did you see her?’
‘See who?’ He squinted into the fog. ‘I can barely see you. Who are you talking about?’
‘I … I think it was the ghost of Isobel Raine,’ Bridie whispered. ‘She saved me.’
Oliver shook his head gently, wrapping his coat around her shoulders. ‘That’s the wine talking.’
Bridie wasn’t so sure.