CHAPTER SIX
The Cos-tumery hummed with thes-pian en-ergy: el-e-vated voices, vi-va-cious hand ges-tures, ex-ag-ger-ated laugh-ter, a bour-don drone in-ter-spersed with bright cack-les, all of it clash-ing in a way that made me want to curl into the fe-tal po-si-tion.
The stu-dent union was an acid trip of a place, filled with blank-faced man-nequins in ab-surd cos-tumes—fur coats and feather boas, re-gal gowns and a mus-ket-man’s breeches, se-quinned boleros and a Tu-dor king’s robe. The fairy-lit bar was backed by a long, dusty mir-ror, which didn’t seem to truly cor-re-spond to the real-life re-flec-tion. Kalei-do-scopic frag-ments danced where there should have been none. Disco lights twirled balls of color around the room at all hours of the day. It was camp and bril-liant and over-whelm-ing.
Stu-dents were notched into leather-up-hol-stered booths, sip-ping at pints of cider and frothy cap-puc-ci-nos, scripts and text-books sprawled out on the ring-marked ma-hogany ta-bles. The whole place smelled of vodka and cran-berry, and it made my stom-ach churn.
There was only half an hour left un-til I had to be at my first re-hearsal as Lady Mac-beth. Nerves rat-tled in my rib cage, my bones jit-ter-ing and jar-ring as I spot-ted my room-mates. The new patch of ex-posed scalp on the back of my head seared like a brand.
Wear the Pax-ton cos-tume, I told my-self, and I felt my-self slip into the skin like it was sec-ond na-ture. High chin, squared shoul-ders, a sub-tle arch to the back. An aloof-ness to my gaze, as though I were above ev-ery-thing and ev-ery-one around me.
Al-most as soon as I slipped into char-ac-ter, the stares and whis-pers be-gan. An elec-tric crackle filled the air. That’s Penny Pax-ton. Yeah, Peggy Pax-ton’s daugh-ter. I can’t be-lieve she’s here.
Feel-ing de-tached from the world in some fun-da-men-tal way, I saun-tered over to the booth my room-mates were piled into. Maisie was sit-ting next to Fraser, nudg-ing his shoul-der and laugh-ing highly at some-thing I hadn’t heard.
“Hey,” Catalina said, mov-ing her brown leather satchel to make more room next to her. A hand-painted sepia map flut-tered out of the front pocket, the name Ata-lan-dia scrawled over the moun-tains in cur-sive script.
As well as por-ing over a non-fic-tion book about the psy-chol-ogy of Shake-speare, Catalina was also fold-ing up a re-ceipt into some-thing crane-shaped—she turned ev-ery scrap of pa-per she could find into origami. “For-give the stack of books. They are, in all se-ri-ous-ness, my best friends.”
I couldn’t help but crack a smile as I slid in be-side her. “You do love the writ-ten word.”
Catalina nod-ded earnestly. “If there are three wolves in-side of us, all of mine are en-cy-clo-pe-dias.”
“What was all that about?” asked Maisie, turn-ing to look at me. She used the fi-nal crust of a cheese toastie to mop up her al-most-empty bowl of tomato soup. I en-vied the ca-su-al-ness with which she ate, as though the very act didn’t fill her with self-loathing. “With Dr-ever, I mean.”
The thought of telling them about the re-cast made my guts clench even harder, but they were about to find out at re-hearsals any-way.
“Davina had to drop out of the play.” I stared down at the lam-i-nated menu, then forced my gaze back up. Pax-ton mask. Come on. “Dr-ever asked me to be Lady Mac-beth.”
“Oh my god!” squealed Catalina, drop-ping the pa-per crane in sur-prise. “That’s amaz-ing! Con-grat-u-la-tions, Penny!”
Fraser gave me a dopey grin from across the booth. “Nice. Looks like we’re fic-tion-ally mar-ried, hey.”
Even though he was slouched in the cor-ner, nurs-ing a black cof-fee, his eyes twin-kled with some-thing I rec-og-nized all too well: in-fat-u-a-tion. Most of the boys at my pri-vate school had looked at me the same way, but barely any of them ac-tu-ally pur-sued it. Al-most as if they knew it was point-less—maybe be-cause I was way out of their league, or maybe be-cause I was a rag-ing les-bian.
Maisie looked be-tween me and Fraser and then back at Fraser, frown-ing. “Wait, why did Davina drop out?”
“I don’t re-ally know,” I lied, pick-ing at a loose flake of skin on my lip. It came away red from my lip-stick. “Dr-ever just said it was be-cause of sched-ul-ing con-flicts.”
The frown on Maisie’s face deep-ened, as though she were per-form-ing some tax-ing men-tal arith-metic. “Right af-ter you and Davina had that blow-up ar-gu-ment yes-ter-day?” She raised a brow. “You still haven’t told us what that was about.”
Fraser scoffed and tipped more sugar into his cof-fee. “You’re lit-er-ally the nosiest per-son I’ve ever met, bro.”
Maisie looked stung, and I hated that she was turn-ing into col-lat-eral.
“No, Maisie’s right,” I said, smil-ing at her in a way I hoped was warm and non-threat-en-ing. “The tim-ing is weird.” I shrugged, but my chest was pound-ing. “I hon-es-tly don’t know what’s go-ing on with Davina. She ar-rived late, did that amaz-ing au-di-tion, then dropped out any-way.”
“What were you ar-gu-ing about?” Maisie asked again.
“Okay, In-spec-tor Cluedo. Why does it mat-ter?” Fraser shrugged, tuck-ing his chin into his navy half-zip sweater. “Penny’s just as tal-ented as Davina. Maybe more so.” He smiled broadly at me, and the lie made me feel queasy.
“If you say so,” Maisie mut-tered, tak-ing a pointed drink of Diet Coke.
Now it was my turn to feel stung.
Catalina raised her hands like a UN me-di-a-tor, and her gold rings twin-kled in the light. “Okay, let’s all take it down sev-eral notches. It’s a stu-dent pro-duc-tion of Mac-beth that lit-er-ally not one per-son on earth cares about ex-cept us. Prob-a-bly not worth mur-der-ing each other over.” Her am-ber-flecked brown eyes crin-kled at the cor-ners. “I mean, no of-fense, Penny. It’s big news and I’m so ex-cited for you. It’s just, you know, a bunch of teens pranc-ing around on stage. It’s not that deep. Any-way. Can I buy you a drink to cel-e-brate?”
“Thanks,” I replied grate-fully, still aware of Maisie’s scorn sear-ing into me. “But I don’t drink, re-mem-ber?”
“Of course.” Catalina tucked a curly lock be-hind her gold-cuffed ear. “Some cheesy chips, at least?”
Noth-ing sounded bet-ter in that mo-ment than cheesy chips. But if I was los-ing my hair, I had to make sure my body was per-fect. And the de-mon lodged in my brain told me I didn’t de-serve food any-way.
“No. Thank you, though.” My stom-ach growled de-fi-antly.
“Are you sure?” She searched my face, as though she knew I was ly-ing—about my hunger, if not about Davina. “You didn’t have break-fast, and you ran this morn-ing. You look a lit-tle pale.”
Her con-cern felt strange. Nei-ther good nor bad, but un-nat-u-ral in some way. My mother had al-ways turned a blind eye to my eat-ing habits—or lack thereof. And the few times my aunt Polly had brought it up, I’d been able to de-flect eas-ily, since she didn’t live with me.
I should have been touched by Catalina’s worry, but the twisted part of my brain told me it was go-ing to be a prob-lem. I didn’t want to have to lie con-stantly, to lay out bowls with a trickle of milk at the bot-tom so she’d think I’d eaten ce-real, to or-der food in restau-rants just to push it around my plate. It would be so much eas-ier if she’d just let it go.
“I’m fine.” Dizzi-ness fuzzed at my eyes, just to spite me. “Just not hun-gry, I guess. I’m not a big food per-son.”
A lie. Such an out-ra-geous lie. I’d loved food since I was a child, when my aunt Polly taught me how to bake. I used to pore over her old-school recipe books, dog-ear-ing the pages I wanted to try next. I was born hun-gry.
Maisie grabbed her back-pack and slid out of the booth. “What-ever. I’m go-ing to find Davina. See if she’s okay.”
An-other lurch in my stom-ach. The last thing I needed was the gos-sip blood-hound sniff-ing around my new-found neme-sis. I just had to hope that Davina wouldn’t tell Maisie the truth—it would im-pli-cate her too, af-ter all.
“I’m head-ing off as well,” said Fraser, shrug-ging his shoul-ders into a puffy gilet. “Con-grats again, Penny.”
Catalina clapped her hands to-gether once they’d left. “Okay, I’m get-ting you a cof-fee at least.” She grabbed a wo-ven coin purse from her bag and slid to-ward the bar. “And there will be sugar in it.” She raised a stern fin-ger, but with a smile. “And you will drink it, be-cause you can-not say no to a type one di-a-betic on sugar-based mat-ters.”
Smil-ing back as sin-cerely as I could, I said, “Thanks.”
As I watched her walk up to the bar, I pulled my phone out of my back pocket. An-other missed call from my mum.
I tapped her name be-fore I could talk my-self out of it.
She an-swered on the sec-ond ring, which was un-usual for her. There was a time when it took at least sev-en-teen at-tempts to ever get hold of her.
“Penny?” Her voice sounded a lit-tle off-kil-ter, and it gave me a prickle of ap-pre-hen-sion. She’d been sober for two years now. I could not bear to see her un-moored yet again.
“Hi, Mum,” I an-swered, mak-ing sure my own pitch was steady.
“Dar-ling! I thought you might be dead in a ditch.”
The ten-sion in my shoul-ders re-laxed some-what. Maybe I had imag-ined the strange tenor in her tone.
“Sorry.” I chuck-led. “I’ve been busy prac-tic-ing the art of stand-ing still.” It was true—Pro-fes-sor Lawrie had us spend hours on end root-ing our-selves to the ground like trees. “A very sane and nor-mal thing to do. Not at all point-less.”
Mum laughed, and it made me glow. “Oh, I re-mem-ber those sem-i-nars. I still never learned to stop wear-ing high heels. The blis-ters, dar-ling.” Al-though we’d lived in Ed-in-burgh for al-most a decade, her ac-cent was still up-per-class Kens-ing-ton. “But if you think that’s un-com-fort-able, just wait for the mas-ter and slave class.”
“I think they call it mas-ter and sub-ject now.”
“Mmmm. Just make sure you’re wear-ing your good knick-ers.”
I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I cupped a hand around my mouth to dis-guise my ex-cited shriek from the stu-dents clus-tered in nearby booths.
“Mum, guess what?” A mi-nus-cule beat. “I got the lead! I’m Lady Mac-beth!”
Per-haps now that it was con-firmed, of-fi-cial, I’d get more of a re-ac-tion.
“Lis-ten, sweet-heart,” Mum said, her words slightly over-lap-ping with mine as though she hadn’t heard me. “The rea-son I’m call-ing is that I sud-denly had the hor-ri-ble re-al-iza-tion that some-one might leak your where-abouts to the tabloids. And once those rot-ten jour-nal-ists know where you are, they might come af-ter you.”
Now I re-al-ized what the odd pitch of her greet-ing had be-trayed. It wasn’t in-tox-i-ca-tion. It was para-noia. My mum’s con-stant bed-fel-low. Even though Bal-lan-tyne’s re-ports into my room-mates had come back clean as a whis-tle, she al-ways found some-thing to latch on to. Al-ways saw ghosts where there were none.
Her lack of ac-knowl-edg-ment about Lady Mac-beth wounded me, but I knew that once she was in one of her spi-rals, noth-ing I said per-me-ated the sur-face of her brain.
“I know not to say any-thing per-sonal to any-one,” I said flatly. “So it won’t mat-ter.”
“But they can be so tricky, these jour-nal-ists.” She was talk-ing rapid-fire now, the ma-nia mount-ing, and I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of pac-ing foot-steps. “You have no idea, Penny. They can pose as your friends or peers, and get you drunk enough that you’ll spill any-thing they ask.”
“I don’t drink. And it seems un-likely that any jour-nal-ists would also be gifted enough ac-tors to waltz into Do-rian on a whim. You know how rig-or-ous the se-lec-tion process is.”
“Well, you know what I mean,” Mum mut-tered darkly. I won-dered if she was alone. “Don’t trust any-one, al-right?”
I watched as Catalina beamed at the bar-ten-der and or-dered my cof-fee. She must’ve said some-thing funny, be-cause his face melted into easy laugh-ter.
“I won’t. I prom-ise.”
When Mum didn’t say any-thing else, I rerouted. “Did you hear what I said? About Lady Mac-beth.”
“Oh yes, dar-ling. Didn’t you al-ready tell me that?” She was still jit-tery. “But con-grat-u-la-tions again.”
An aching hol-low-ness opened a well in my ribs. The praise felt en-tirely empty. It was miss-ing the earnest fer-vor—the heart-felt zeal—I so sorely craved.
“Thanks.”
An-other strange beat, laden with some-thing I couldn’t iden-tify. Then she said, so qui-etly I al-most didn’t catch it, “Did they men-tion any-thing to you about pri-vate men-tor-ing? Or is that a thing of the past?”
I frowned. A pe-cu-liar ques-tion. “Erm, yeah. With Or-lagh Cam-ran. She men-tors all the first-year fe-male leads.”
Mum didn’t re-ply for a long stretch. Catalina set off to-ward the booth once more, the cof-fee cup rat-tling in its blue saucer.
“Mum?” I prod-ded, un-ease spread-ing over me like a win-ter frost. “Are you there?”
“Just be care-ful, al-right?” She sounded al-most stran-gled, the words pulled taut by an in-vis-i-ble noose.
I sighed. “I told you I’m not go-ing to talk to any jour-nal-ists.”
“With Or-lagh, I mean. Just … be care-ful.”
And then the phone went dead.