Thirty-Nine Lucie
Thirty-Nine
LUCIE
I don’t go straight home. Instead, I walk.
From my earliest days in Stratford, I’ve found its streets comforting. I walk when I’m stuck for an answer, when play lines won’t settle in my brain, when I need a moment to myself. Walking the maze of back streets, alleyways and courtyards of the town reconnects me to something older than myself, something far bigger than any concern I face.
The history of the town is one thing, but its personality matters more. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Shakespeare came from here, or that he wrote so many of his works in this place. There’s a sense of creativity over everything in the town. It has its problems, too, of course – what town doesn’t – but there’s a sense of resilience and possibility that I haven’t experienced in any other place I’ve lived.
This evening, it’s my silent solace in the slowly setting sun.
The look on Theo’s face when I confronted him. It will haunt me forever.
Even as I said it, even knowing beyond any doubt that those messages were his, I’d willed him to prove me wrong. It was an impossible hope. But I thought Theo could still confound me.
I don’t know how long I walk for, only that by the time I reach home the town is still, beneath a blanket of stars.
And as soon as I put my key in the lock, the door flies open to reveal Cass and Lyle. My wonderful friends.
I love them for being here. But I hate that they have to be.
The sight of them is too much: sorrow overwhelms me on the doorstep and I collapse into their arms.
I cry for hours, alternately sobbing, yelling and sitting in numb shock, while Lyle makes endless tea and Cass keeps stoic vigil beside me. I want answers, but there are none: everything I thought I knew about Theo, about this summer, about The Garden Players and my onward career is gone. I don’t know what remains.
‘What happens to me now?’ I ask, much later, when tears have been replaced by dull, immovable hurt.
Cass strokes my hair. ‘You keep going.’
‘Going where? Everyone will know and I’ll just be that girl who Theo Larkin kissed .’
‘How will everyone know?’ Lyle asks. ‘Theo’s unlikely to want to broadcast it.’
I glare back. ‘Because Duncan told me. And if he’s told me, he’ll tell everyone. He’s never wanted me to succeed. This is his ultimate revenge.’
‘Lu, listen to yourself. Duncan is an idiot but he’s also a coward. Yes, he told you and it probably gave him the sick little ego-kick of his dreams, but nobody else will listen to him.’
‘They will,’ I insist, my worst fears of him making me a laughing stock playing out in my mind.
‘Listen, I work at the theatre and I can tell you, with one hundred per cent certainty, the teams there think he’s a dick.’
I want to be comforted by Lyle’s words, but all I can see is the end of my career. Appearing as Miranda would have been my biggest break. Without it – and with the end of our summer season at the Birthplace imminent – I don’t see how I can carry on.
I’ve dreaded the inevitable end for so long, but now it looms ahead, shadow-dark and shapeless.
‘This is the end, isn’t it?’ I moan, giving my deepest fears a voice.
‘No, Lu …’
‘I knew it was coming. It did for you, Cass, and you, Lyle. The moment where you give up the dream because it doesn’t work any more.’
‘Hey, don’t talk like that.’ Lyle tries to calm me, but now the words are on my tongue, they refuse to be silenced.
‘I don’t want to lose my life here. I don’t want to lose you …’
‘Oh, Lu …’ I see Cass exchange a look with Lyle as she throws her arms around me. ‘You won’t lose us.’
‘What if I can’t find a decent job in Stratford? What if I have to leave?’
‘Then we’ll be a phone call away.’
I should be calmed by this, but my fears are running away from me, down roads they have no right to travel. ‘I like my life. I’ve found my place here. I never felt like that when I was teaching. I never felt like I had people in my life who understood me. I had friends, but the moment I stopped working with them, they disappeared. What if that happens again in a new job?’
Lyle is the other side of me now, he and Cass holding me up as I sag between them. ‘It doesn’t matter what you decide, Lu. You will always have us. Right, Cass?’
‘Right,’ Cass agrees. ‘Because we are your weirdos.’
It’s so unexpected, a shudder of laughter breaks my flow. ‘Weirdos?’
‘Weirdos. We’ve had those kind of fair-weather friendships before, too. But we’re all older now – like it or not – and friendship is different when you’ve lived longer. It’s not about people who are in the same profession as you, or a social group you can hang out with. It’s about finding your weirdos: people who don’t want to change you because you don’t want to change them. You just accept their weirdness like they accept yours.’
‘Are you saying I’m weird?’
‘Yes! Because you are weird. But so am I. So’s Lyle. And Ced and Dev. Distance or change of circumstance can’t affect that. Whatever you decide, whatever’s next, we’re your weirdos. We’ve worked too hard to find each other: we won’t let you go.’
It’s impossibly lovely and heart-stoppingly profound at once and I don’t know how to express what it means. So I shelve all the clever things I could say and just gather my best friends into a huge hug instead.
It doesn’t take away the pain Theo’s caused, but having them with me helps.
Eventually, Cass and Lyle coax me to bed, and even though I’m adamant I won’t sleep, I succumb to bone-deep exhaustion as soon as my head meets the pillow.
My last thought as sleep pulls me away is of Theo’s response when I confronted him. Not shock that I would think it possible, but horror he was found out.
Did he ever care about me?