Chapter 1
One
IN JANUARY WE BEGAN a new term, our second.
When we’d started there had been seventeen of us.
Now we were down to fourteen. No one had heard from Maddy.
Toby occasionally sent pictures of his travels around Thailand or Vietnam or wherever, riding elephants, posing with tigers, petite young women hanging from his arm and a pair of wraparound sunglasses glued to his forehead.
Another classmate, Felix, had dropped out in the first week back.
On his final day we sat around in the pub while he explained that university or, holding up his fingers, ‘drama school’, was meant to be fun, how he’d expected to be drunk each night and that he was tired of working his arse off day after day, only to be told he was a shit actor and destined to fail.
We all sipped our drinks in silence at that.
It was hard to disagree with him. Most of us were fresh from visits home, from catch-ups with old school friends who were having the time of their lives at uni, shagging, drinking, making mistakes, discovering who they were.
Meanwhile, what had we discovered? That we had limited casting, weak voices and bad attitudes.
That term we studied Twelfth Night in amongst the usual voice, movement, accent and dance classes.
As rain fell in icy sheets against the windows of Rehearsal Room Three, we paraded back and forth in practice skirts and billowing shirts, parrying clever witticisms, de-dum-de-dum-de-dumming iambic verse, and repeating archaic jokes we didn’t understand and which never once raised a smile from Frida, our director.
First-years weren’t usually directed by Frida – that pleasure being reserved for second- and third-years – but on the first day back in January, she marched into the room where we were warming up and announced that we’d made a poor start, and that from now on she’d be personally intervening in our development.
The news she’d be directing us divided opinion.
Frida was Marmite. A brave few openly expressed their dislike, calling her a has-been, a harpy and a thwarted, ageing nobody with sadomasochistic tendencies.
But for the most part, the majority of us found ourselves in a vice-like grip of love, admiration and pure, undiluted fear.
Frida was God, our maker. Her wrath inspired trembling; a kind word thrown someone’s way, tears.
When she said that Hettie’s Maria had real gusto, the poor girl had to take a moment outside the rehearsal room to stifle her relieved sobs, while Tiff, her alternate, watched on in quiet envy.
That term, the girls were once again asked to share parts.
In week two, Frida announced to our small cohort of women that a portion of our final grades would be dependent on us producing a seamless and coherent characterization with our alternate.
This felt like an extra hoop to jump through on top of the line-learning and individual labour we were still expected to do.
When Victoria raised her hand to point out that none of the boys had to split roles, Frida replied:
‘In the industry you are about to enter, there are ten outstanding female performers to every adequate male performer. And to every ten dreary male roles in a play, there is one female: an ingénue, a maid, a mother, or maybe, if you’re lucky, a wife.
You will have to work twice as hard and your opportunities will be twice as rare.
This is a fact. I cannot change it, the school cannot change it.
The sooner you accept the reality ahead of you, the sooner you’ll know if you’re cut out for this profession. ’
I was to share the role of Viola with Lola Aguillard, a willowy French girl who divided her weekends between Paris and London and did modelling in her spare time.
She had long straight blonde hair and dark shadows beneath her eyes.
I never really understood why people thought she was pretty, but her dad was a respected screenwriter and her mum had received an Oscar nomination in the eighties, so there was that.
Lola was a detached sort who seemed to survive exclusively on black coffee, sesame crackers and salted kale.
After graduation, she went on to land a string of high-profile modelling contracts and a large-ish role in a new film adaptation of Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
I didn’t particularly want to spend any more time with Lola than I had to.
The girl creeped me out, never saying anything, just peeling her split ends and sucking on her hair.
But I was glad not to be sharing a role with Victoria.
Every day I watched her in rehearsals, the way she commanded the stage as much as she did the room.
I watched her laugh and fling her arms around Obi’s shoulders, the easy jokes she made with Stefano and Jolly, the warm smiles and kind words she bestowed upon other members of the class.
I watched her and I studied her, peering out from behind my notebook as she sailed across the sprung floors of the rehearsal room, her very existence lighting up an otherwise dreary day.
I thought back to New Year’s, to Victoria’s sleeping form on the sofa, curled up like a question mark.
I thought about the day after, when she and the others had left, the smell when I brought her used sheets to my nose, the soft cotton still warmed with the memory of her.
‘Why are you always watching this girl?’ Lola asked me one afternoon.
‘What?’ I said, distracted. Victoria was helping the group choreograph a movement piece. They were attempting to block out a storm for the shipwreck opener using just their bodies and a length of silk.
‘Victoria. You watch her all day long. Are you a lesbian?’
I spun around. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘It’s OK.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t judge.’
‘I am not a lesbian.’
‘But you are in love with her, no?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ I hissed. ‘I don’t love Victoria. I’m just watching her – them – rehearse. I’m just, just supporting my classmates.’
Lola shrugged and resumed picking at a limp strand of hair. ‘Whatever. It doesn’t bother me.’
I slammed my notebook shut.
‘I need to go over my lines,’ I snapped, before picking up my bag and moving to the other end of the room.
IN CRITS THAT TERM, I was given a fail for my final performance.
Malcolm said I looked lost onstage, Casper claimed my vocals were strained, and Frida said she’d forgotten the finer points of my performance almost immediately, that I’d disappeared, swallowed up by the enormity of the text.
Frida advised me to pair up with another actress for my retake.
She said I needed to step up my game soon or this would be my last term at the school.
I hated her then. Frida, that is. I really hated her.
VICTORIA AGREED TO HELP me pass the resit.
‘There’s no shame in having to do it again, you know,’ Victoria said, scooping her long hair up into a bun.
‘I know.’
‘If anything, it’s an opportunity to show them you can take direction.’
‘Sure.’
‘You seem pissed off.’
‘I’m not pissed off. I’m just exhausted and tired of being here all the time.’
It was 7 p.m. The lights of the rehearsal room were too bright. We’d been at the school since eight that morning. It was the last week of term before Easter, and I wanted nothing more than to throw my copy of Twelfth Night into the fire.
‘I’m sick of this play.’
‘Come here,’ Victoria said, pulling me into a hug. ‘You are brave. You are talented. You can do this.’ She took a step back and placed her hands on my shoulders. ‘So, Act One, Scene Five?’
‘Yes.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘For the billionth time.’
‘Right, Viola,’ Victoria said, consulting the script. ‘Let’s go from Good madam.’
‘OK.’ I tucked my T-shirt into my leggings and positioned myself upstage. ‘Good madam, let me see your face.’ I dropped to my knee.
‘Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face? You are now out of your text. But we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.’ Victoria, miming, lifted her veil. ‘Look you, sir, such a one I was this present. Is’t not well done?’
I gazed at the loose wisps of hair escaping at the nape of her neck, at her dark eyebrows and sharp jawline, her pale cheeks and rosy lips. ‘Excellently done, if God did all.’
‘Sorry, can I stop you?’ Victoria asked.
‘OK,’ I muttered, trying to hide my irritation at the interruption, at her well-meaning smile.
‘It feels like you’re missing something.’
‘What?’ I said, getting to my feet.
‘You’re a fake, right?’
‘I – err, excuse me?’ I said. My heart jumped inside my chest.
‘Cesario is a fake. He’s just Viola dressed up, pretending to be a boy.’
‘Right, yes, of course,’ I replied, crossing my arms and avoiding her gaze.
‘And so here he is – here she is – having to deliver this message and pretend to be a guy, as well as being respectful towards this mad cow who’s falling in love with her.’
Victoria placed her hands on her hips. ‘Not to mention that she’s totally in love with her master and she was shipwrecked in a storm, like, yesterday.
And on top of all that, she’s having to bury this maelstrom of feelings about her dead twin.
It just seems like it would be a lot, you know?
’ She stopped and grimaced. ‘And now, you’re looking at me like you want to shoot me. ’
I gave her a small smile. ‘I don’t want to shoot you.’
‘You know I’m only trying to help,’
‘I know. Go on. You can be honest.’
‘OK, so, like, I guess, right now, it just feels like you haven’t layered all those things in. It’s just a bit 2D.’
‘Yeah . . . you’re probably right.’
‘Viola’s got so much going on inside her. She is the storm.’ Victoria stood up and came over to me. ‘You’re close, sweetie. Your Viola’s very nearly there.’
‘I’m so tired.’
‘I know you are.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
‘But why not use that? Put all that exhaustion and frustration into being Viola. Imagine you’ve got all these secrets and lies swirling around you which are bursting at the seams, and you just have to hold them all in somehow.
’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘Does that make sense?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That makes sense.’
I passed the resit.