Chapter 1 The Apple and the Pearl #24
She opens her eyes to find a young man right beside her, drinking from a water bottle set on the props table.
A dancer, lithe and hairless, dressed in a maroon leotard thing and some black fleecy trousers that don’t leave much to the imagination.
The remnants of acne spot his forehead, a prominent Adam’s apple bobs as he gulps at a bottle of water and damp locks of mousey blond hair cling to his flushed neck.
She offers a tentative smile and he smiles back with something like relief.
‘Are you the new LX assistant?’
She nods. He hesitates, then holds out a hand for her to shake, which she does though it seems too formal, like they’re playing at being grown up.
‘I’m Luke. I was the newest one before you.’
‘Nice to meet you. I’m Lara.’
So here’s the poor bugger who’s replaced the poker-playing ballet prodigy no one will talk about. He doesn’t look like he’s stepping up to the job. He looks pale and cowed. There’s something tender about him, something a little too raw that makes you want to look away.
‘Do you like it here?’ she says. ‘I feel like people are really kind and friendly.’
Immediately she sees that she’s said the wrong thing. His face crumples, and he has a long glug of his water to hide some kind of disappointment.
‘I wouldn’t say Cecile is exactly friendly.
’ he says, his voice a little lowered. ‘Everyone else knows the show inside out, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
’ Too kind, Lara thinks. Too nice. Didn’t anyone ever tell him that the human world chews you up and spits you out if you’re too good, let alone the fairy world?
Lara baulks a little at the thought. Should she be, like, preparing to be snatched?
Should she have a plan? Should she be learning what she can about the fairy creatures, just in case?
Is Zach going to make that uncomfortable, squirmy face if she asks him this question?
On stage Cecile shouts, ‘Alors, we go back to the hunting dance one more time and then I will release myself from this torture for today.’
Luke screws his eyes shut, lifts his chin and peels the fleecy trousers off his legs. ‘That’s me. Wish me luck.’
He appears on stage and Cecile’s face darkens at the sight of him.
Poor boy. Lara watches as the ghost of a mean-looking old lady stands in the wings and glares at Luke with a scowl on her face.
Hounded by the living and the dead. Maybe that’s why he looks like a cringing dog waiting for someone to kick him.
Maybe without that old woman’s spirit following him around he would be able to flourish.
She could help him, perhaps, offer to release him from whoever she is – a grandmother, probably.
That would be kind. A good deed. A way to start off here on the right foot.
But here’s the thing, it’s never easy to tell what the right foot is when you’re dealing with the dead.
She started off getting it wrong when she was only a child – insistently telling her year three teacher that a baby wanted her to cuddle him, that he was crying for her, that he was right there on her desk, couldn’t she hear?
– and then she blacked out on the playground after a long, hot lunchtime of dodging the ghosts her school friends lugged around.
Mum, after the teachers called her in for a meeting after school: Doreen, get down here, you need to teach the kid to keep her bloody mouth shut.
At first, Mum and Doreen had been thrilled.
They’d gone hell for leather on the multi-generational medium angle, making posters advertising the psychic child prodigy, dressing her up in frilly dresses for the double-price seances but Lara had pretended the ability left her on the morning she found a rust-coloured stain on her bedsheets.
That was the sort of thing Doreen, Nana and Mum went in for so they believed her.
It had been her who had persuaded Granddad to stop knocking the teapot over and hurling pictures off the wall.
She’d sat in the airing cupboard of the new house for hours, colouring in and chatting to him.
After he’d disappeared gracefully into the boiler pipes she realised that it wasn’t so simple, this ancient dance between the living and the dead.
Now the spirits are like birds in the sky, almost always harmless and hardly ever out to get her.
Or anyone else. She’s learned the dead don’t always have a reason to hang around.
Sometimes they just linger and there’s nothing you can do about them.
That’s why she doesn’t offer to intercede unless she is a hundred per cent sure there is something she can do, and that something will be welcome.
It was all right for Auntie Doreen, because when someone’s paid a hundred quid to come to a seance you can reasonably expect that they’re all right about getting messages from their husband, mother, friend, son.
But what is Lara going to do here on The Apple and the Pearl, a show so surprisingly filled with ghosts she is struggling to pay attention to the living rather than the shadows they’re carting around?
What might she do about the little blond-headed boy sitting cross-legged next to Cecile, for instance; or the woman wearing a cape of goose feathers standing next to Belinda; or that old lady who right now is thumping her cane at Luke’s feet in time to the music?
A shadow falls over her and she opens her eyes.
A man is standing over her, another crew member by the look of his black jeans and black sweatshirt.
He’s balding, with a few wisps of straw-coloured hair combed over the top of his head, and his jowly cheeks are covered in grey stubble.
Behind him, stretching the whole depth of the stage, is a long line of animals – cats and foxes and toads and stoats.
‘Lara, isn’t it?’ She nods. She’d like to stand so she doesn’t have to look up at him but he’s too close to her. ‘I’m Derek the follow spot.’
‘Nice to meet you.’ He doesn’t hold out his hand and she’s glad.
Derek giggles, a strangely girlish sound for a balding man with a paunch. ‘What’s your boyfriend’s name?’
She glances at the parade of animal souls behind him and when she meets his eyes again she sees his expression has tightened in glee. Who or what is this man? ‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’
‘Girlfriend?’
Lara presses her lips together and shakes her head.
Will she get in trouble if she tells his man and his shadowy zoo to fuck off on her very first day?
Maybe this is a test, and if she takes a hard line with this creep today then he’ll leave her alone.
She glances over Derek’s shoulder to the door to the corridor. Where is Zach?
Derek smiles. ‘Our Zachary will be pleased. Don’t you go breaking his heart now. We don’t need any more miserable men here on The Apple and the Pearl.’
Lara frowns. She’s not sure what he’s talking about but she doesn’t want to ask him, she wants him to go away.
She looks back at the stage where Cecile is furiously counting the music over the pianist and poor Luke is pink with embarrassment, but Derek crouches so that his face is right next to hers.
‘I bet you Zachary won’t have told you about the Crow.’ His breath is hot and sour and his clothes stink of old cigarette smoke. She leans away, keeping her gaze on the dancers. Nana’s voice in her head: If anyone messes with you, you just kick him in the balls.
‘He did, actually.’
‘Well, let Derek tell you a bit more.’ He leans closer and she gets another blast of his fetid breath.
‘See, the Crow is old. She came from a people who are long gone now, a people who ruled Faerie before all the poncy earls and queens we see out there. And Crow is kind, like all her sisters out in the world. She brings souls from one world to another, makes sure they don’t get stuck in between.
And Crow sees. She knows all your little sad and dirty and shameful thoughts.
You can’t hide from her. Don’t even try. ’
Derek smiles. ‘But a clever girl like you probably knows all about that, don’t you? It being All Souls’, and all.’
He’s staring at her, one side of his mouth curled in a sneering smile, and she is unable to look away even though the animals behind him are getting agitated, with little mews and growls, even though she has the feeling he is seeing a little too much of her, even though—
‘Everything okay?’ Zach’s voice is too loud, a little confrontational.
Derek rises immediately and gives Zach a mocking salute.
Zach glares at him, then turns to Lara as Derek slinks away, whistling quietly as he strolls through the wing and crosses the stage behind the safety backdrop. ‘You ready to get some dinner?’
Lara nods and stands quickly, wiping her damp palms over her thighs.
‘Was Derek being a dick?’
‘Kind of.’ She follows Zach into the corridor and past the noticeboard.
‘What did he say?’
‘He told me some stuff about the Crow.’ How can she explain that sense of unease he brought with him, the odd gleam in his eye, the menagerie of souls?
Zach holds the stage door open for her and a blast of cold air hits her face.
Zach grimaces. ‘I’m sorry. He’s so weird. I try to avoid him as much as I can. You can report him to Belinda, you know.’
‘I bet Belinda’s got a whole drawerful of complaints.
’ Lara looks down at their boots as they trot along the avenue between the mausoleums, footsteps out of sync with Zach’s long stride.
There is a gravity between their bodies now, something charged between them.
She is hyper-aware of the presence of his living, breathing body and the absence of any ghosts trailing him.
The relief she felt as Zach appeared behind Derek, the repressed fury on his face, the way the sheer bulk of him shoved Derek away.