CHAPTER FOUR
The day af-ter leav-ing the print-out on Dr-ever’s desk, I spent his en-tire act-ing sem-i-nar feel-ing sick to my stom-ach.
Be-cause Davina was nowhere to be seen.
Had he al-ready dropped her from the pro-duc-tion?
Worse … had she been booted off the pro-gram en-tirely?
It was a pos-si-bil-ity that came to me late at night, toss-ing and turn-ing as an old oak tree out-side Aber-nathy scraped at the rat-tling win-dow-pane. As cruel-tongued as Davina was, she didn’t de-serve to have her en-tire ca-reer ru-ined be-fore it had even be-gun. And if some-one other than Dr-ever had found the photo first, who knew how far they might have es-ca-lated it?
Hor-ri-fied with my knee-jerk ac-tions, I ar-rived at Dr-ever’s class-room twenty min-utes early that morn-ing, hop-ing the black-mail would still be on his desk and that I could scoop it up be-fore any se-vere ac-tion was taken. But the class-room was locked, and when Dr-ever fi-nally ar-rived to let us in—five min-utes late and dis-tinctly har-ried-look-ing—I saw that the print-out had al-ready gone.
The print-out was gone, and so was Davina.
I re-as-sured my-self that if it had been es-ca-lated to the dean, Dr-ever would not still be stand-ing here ges-tic-u-lat-ing about the Stanislavski method. I scanned his face for any clues about what had tran-spired; pur-plish bags un-der his dark brown eyes, a slouched weari-ness to his usu-ally up-right pos-ture. I even sniffed the air when he strode past my rick-ety pine desk, hop-ing to catch a scent of Davina’s musky per-fume or earthy to-bacco on his tweed blazer.
Noth-ing.
The class-room was both shad-owy and bright, with dusty sun-light fil-ter-ing through dra-matic bay win-dows. A green chalk-board hung at the front of the room be-hind a squat desk laden with leather-bound vol-umes and a mounted Phan-tom of the Opera mask—Dr-ever had got his start in mu-si-cals, much to the ad-mon-ish-ment of Do-rian’s sniffier pro-fes-sors.
The oak floor-boards creaked and groaned when-ever Dr-ever shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and his cav-ernous voice echoed and boomed in the rafters.
I stretched in the loose-legged chair. My body ached from a week of move-ment ses-sions. I’d al-ways been nat-u-rally fit—run-ning was my pre-ferred method of main-tain-ing my physique—but the way Madame Lav-i-gne com-bined Lecoq with yoga and pi-lates was stretch-ing my mus-cles in ways they’d never been stretched be-fore. Com-bined with the five miles I’d forced my-self to jog that morn-ing, I was hurt-ing.
As I moved, I felt half a dozen sets of eyes fix-ing on me. Not be-cause I was do-ing any-thing es-pe-cially note-wor-thy, but be-cause in the pres-ence of ex-tra-or-di-nary beauty, peo-ple stared.
My ap-pear-ance af-forded me a cer-tain priv-i-lege in the way I moved through the world, but it also cast a con-stant spot-light on me at times when I would pre-fer the lux-ury of anonymity. For some-one so mor-tally afraid of be-ing per-ceived, it made per-cep-tion an in-evitabil-ity. Yet I played into it, al-ways. I starved and jogged and preened. I chose the show-stop-ping out-fits, the per-fect light makeup, the long, flow-ing hair-styles. I spent un-due en-ergy on keep-ing my waist small and my nails painted in pretty pas-tels. It was ex-haust-ing, and yet I was so ter-ri-fied to stop—be-cause who would I be with-out it?
And now my hair was fall-ing out.
I’d been too afraid to wash my hair that morn-ing, and it felt heavy on my scalp. Once again I’d tucked it into a low pony, at-tempt-ing to make it chic with a leather scrunchie.
“Of course, Stanislavski’s method has down-sides,” said Dr-ever, his hands an-i-mated as he talked, “and the murky con-cept of emo-tional mem-ory is prob-a-bly the most con-tro-ver-sial. With this tech-nique, an ac-tor ac-ti-vates the mem-ory of a lived ex-pe-ri-ence to con-nect to their char-ac-ter—but in the pur-suit of height-en-ing emo-tional mem-ory, some ac-tors merge their per-sonal lives with their char-ac-ters’ lives in psy-cho-log-i-cally un-healthy ways. On oc-ca-sion, they may un-earth deep-rooted trauma in their own pasts—and, dis-turbingly, they can-not re-mem-ber whether it is real or an im-plant from their char-ac-ter. The bounds of their iden-ti-ties be-come blurred, and that is a dan-ger-ous thing.”
My phone buzzed in my Her-mès back-pack, and my stom-ach clenched it-self into a fist. Mum again. I still hadn’t re-turned her call, and it was rare for her to per-sist in try-ing to reach me.
I thought back to the Do-rian open day, which she was sup-posed to at-tend with me. I’d spent the morn-ing ag-o-niz-ing over the per-fect out-fit to wear, even-tu-ally set-tling for a flo-ral Valentino dress and an over-sized Bal-main tote.
Your looks are your great-est cur-rency, as she had al-ways taught me.
A few min-utes be-fore we were due to set off, though, she de-cided she couldn’t face it af-ter all.
“Oh, sweetie, it would just be so strange to set foot there again.” She wrung her hands, skin so pale it was al-most blue. “All those mem-o-ries, and … I’m sorry, dar-ling. You’ll be fine with-out me, won’t you? Any-way, it’s prob-a-bly not cool to have your old mum float-ing around be-hind you, is it?”
Old was a stretch—she looked the same as she had twenty years ago.
Part of me was re-lieved that she had bailed. I’d be far less likely to be stared at with-out my iconic mother strid-ing around the cam-pus. But I was stung, none-the-less. She’d al-ways been flaky, miss-ing out on the youth the-ater pro-duc-tion of Cabaret to have drinks with a for-mer man-ager, skip-ping my cross-coun-try cham-pi-on-ships to at-tend Mi-lan Fash-ion Week.
I tried to con-vince my-self that her flak-ing on the Do-rian open day had noth-ing to do with the fact I’d come out to her as gay two days prior. In-tel-lec-tu-ally I knew she wasn’t pre-tend-ing when she said she didn’t care—she’d par-tic-i-pated in enough or-gies in her day to be lax about that kind of thing—but the in-se-cure lit-tle girl at the heart of me needed the re-as-sur-ance.
She in-sisted that she loved me the same as she al-ways had. But maybe that was the prob-lem.
“You look like a god-dess, though,” she’d purred as I was clam-ber-ing into a hastily sum-moned Uber. “Your beauty will open doors for you that are locked to most other peo-ple. Al-ways re-mem-ber that. Love you, dar-ling.” The last three words were ut-tered out of some vague sense of good man-ners.
Around me in the class-room were the sounds of pen-cil cases zip-ping and note-books snap-ping shut, and I re-al-ized Dr-ever had dis-missed us.
“Lunch at the Cos-tumery?” asked Maisie, who’d been sit-ting to my left and tex-ting un-der the ta-ble the whole time. Catalina sat to my other side, still scrib-bling fu-ri-ous notes.
The three of us—plus Fraser, our fourth room-mate—usu-ally ate in the stu-dent union af-ter our morn-ing sem-i-nar. The sched-ule at Do-rian was pun-ish-ing, with four hours of aca-demic classes last-ing un-til mid-day, a quick sus-te-nance break and then four hours of re-hearsals in the af-ter-noon. On one or two evenings a week, we also had pri-vate ses-sions with our in-di-vid-ual men-tors. Mine was a stand-off-ish male pro-fes-sor, Dr. Ked-die, who had an hon-est-to-god “count-down to re-tire-ment” cal-en-dar hung be-hind his desk.
My head rushed dizzily as I stood up.
“Sounds good,” I said to Maisie, still ir-ri-tated about her com-ments about whether I de-served to be at Do-rian.
“Unff,” moaned Fraser, who had been club-bing in the city last night and was still suf-fer-ing im-mensely. He’d been cast as Mac-beth in the first-year pro-duc-tion and was still in the throes of cel-e-bra-tion.
I couldn’t get a strong read on Fraser. He was hand-some and he knew it, with chis-eled Asian fea-tures, a tall, carved physique and thick black hair swept to one side. His en-ergy was some-where be-tween golden re-triever, guf-faw-ing rugby lad, and un-fairly tal-ented clas-si-cal ac-tor. Fraser was also ab-surdly good at im-prov. I’d never seen any-one switch so ef-fort-lessly into dif-fer-ent per-sonas.
Maisie gazed at him while she thought he wasn’t look-ing. She was, with-out ques-tion, com-pletely in-fat-u-ated.
As we were traips-ing out of the airy class-room—Catalina lag-ging be-hind as she fin-ished an ur-gent para-graph—I’d al-most for-got-ten about the Davina sit-u-a-tion. About her con-spic-u-ous ab-sence, and what it might mean. About what I had done, and why I had done it.
Un-til Dr-ever fixed me with an im-pen-e-tra-ble gaze and said, “Penny, can I have a word?”