‘Her?’ Tamara said, her sweet character momentarily slipping. ‘You’re more than welcome, Olive. I just don’t know if it’s your thing.’
‘Where are you going?’ Olive pulled her cardigan sleeves over her hands.
‘The Hideout.’ Tamara shimmied, leaning in towards Oscar.
‘The Hideout?’ Oscar stepped back again. ‘Oh, well then, I’m definitely not going. That place is constantly crawling with paparazzi.’
‘I know. Why do you think we like it there?’ Jane added as she passed them.
‘I’m not really big on clubs.’ Olive’s palms started to clam up.
‘No, I didn’t think you would be,’ Tamara said with a glance down at her boots. ‘I don’t suppose much dancing gets done in those.’ She laughed.
‘I dunno!’ said Oscar. ‘I reckon she’s got some secret moves.’ He did a ‘raising the roof’ gesture with his upturned palms.
‘Oh, they’re not secret. Pole dancing’s my thing, actually.’ Olive nodded.
‘Yeah?’ Oscar smirked.
‘Yup.’ Her expression only wavered a fraction as she bent down to collect her script. She brushed her hair back from her face to let Oscar catch a glimpse of her smirk.
‘Well, maybe we should go tonight, then? You can show off your moves.’ He folded his arms.
‘And you can just… show off?’ she smiled, and Oscar gasped, holding a hand against his heart.
‘Ouch! Hurtful, hurtful words, Miss Green.’
‘So, you are coming?’ Tamara asked, taking Oscar’s hand and clutching it between her perfectly manicured nails.
‘Is it happening?’ Oscar looked at Olive, raising his eyebrows.
‘Well…’
Oscar pouted at her.
‘Oh, all right. We’re in,’ Olive surrendered, and Oscar wrenched his hand free from Tamara’s talons and held it out to high five with Olive.
‘I just hope you’re ready for this.’ Olive bit her bottom lip mock-seductively, and started to body ripple over-enthusiastically.
‘There are those moves I was talking about!’ Oscar stuck out his bum and started to shake it, Beyoncé style, mimicking her face of concentration. Olive laughed but it died in her throat when she caught Tamara rolling her eyes over Oscar’s shoulder.
‘Enough of that, you two!’ Michael said, giving them the side eye but smiling all the same.
‘Is it true this theatre has a mouse problem?’ asked Jane, and although she had obviously changed the subject, Olive was grateful that the heat was off her.
‘All theatres have mice,’ Michael replied without looking up, flipping through his script to find the right page.
‘It’s the ghosts you’ve got to worry about,’ said Doug, wiggling his fingers around Jane’s head in an attempt to spook her, but she simply batted him away.
‘Ghosts?’ Oscar raised an eyebrow.
‘Nearly every theatre in the West End has a ghost,’ Olive said, dragging a chair into place as part of their makeshift rehearsal set.
‘Some have more than others,’ Howard added, hauling a table on its mark.
‘The older ones, for sure!’ Doug continued, sitting himself onto Howard’s table.
‘And this is just an accepted thing. That ghosts exist and the West End is infested with them?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Of course.’
‘Didn’t you know?’ They all nattered back, except Tamara.
‘Of course they don’t exist,’ she said.
‘Thank you, Tamara!’ Oscar shouted, folding his arms and sitting down in Olive’s chair, enjoying her little exaggerated huff behind him. ‘See. The voices of reason.’ Oscar looked at Olive and gestured to himself and Tamara.
‘Erm…’ Doug raised his hand. ‘I’m calling bullshit,’ he said with a glint in his eye.
‘What?’ said Tamara, sitting on the floor and stretching out her legs into second position, her flexibility on show.
‘When we were in West Side Story at the Festival theatre in Edinburgh last year I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move as fast as you did when you ran into our dressing room, crying because you thought you’d seen the Great Lafayette.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Tamara snapped.
‘Yes,’ Doug laughed. ‘You did!’
‘Who?’ asked Oscar.
‘Lafayette.’ Olive turned to Oscar. ‘He was a magician that died in a fire when one of his tricks went wrong on stage. His ghost has been known to haunt the left wing ever since.’
‘Just the left wing?’ Oscar folded his arms.
‘Yup,’ said Doug.
‘Right…’
‘No, the left,’ Doug smirked.
‘Something the matter?’ Olive leant around from behind Oscar to get a look at his cynical face, her cheeks rosy, and her eyes sparkling with humour.
‘No, no. Nothing at all. Everyone in this room believes in a ghost that only haunts one half of a theatre. Everything’s… normal,’ he chuckled.
‘Look, be as sceptical as you like, but sometimes spooky things happen that no one can explain,’ Olive said, plonking herself down on the floor beside him. She glanced over at Michael, who was still sipping his takeaway coffee and flipping through his notes and script pages. She estimated they had at least another four to six minutes before he realised he’d let them all slip into chatter again.
‘I’m not sceptical. I’m right! Ghosts don’t exist.’
‘Look, we’re not judging you, Oscar. We all thought that too before we stepped inside a draughty, creaky, dark and spooky theatre where the rules of time and space don’t apply.’
‘The rules of time and space… did everyone smoke something during the lunch break and I missed out?’
‘What Olive means is, you’ll spend what you think is four hours in a theatre doing rehearsals only to find out it’s been five minutes,’ Doug explained.
‘And you’ll be in someone’s dressing room one day and when you go to find it the next, it won’t be where you left it,’ Howard chipped in.
‘And all the hiding places you think are secret are never quite secret enough!’ said Sammy from the doorway with her great big rucksack perched on her back and her dance clothes on underneath her coat.
‘And finally, she arrives!’ Olive cried, getting up from the floor and rushing to hug her friend. ‘How’d it go?’
‘How it always goes.’ Sammy rolled her eyes and wiped her dark hair off her sweaty forehead.
‘So you nailed it then?’
‘They want to see me again, but you can just never tell, can you? They keep their cards so close to their chest.’
‘Well, the fact they want to see you again is amazing,’ said Olive, taking Sammy’s bag from her and putting it in the corner with her own.
‘And Oscar?’ Sammy was shrugging off her bag and her coat but paused to say, ‘Ghosts exist. There’s no debate. And if you don’t believe, you’ll just attract more ghosts to haunt your disbelieving arse, so I’d watch it if I were you.’
‘All right! Back to it!’ Michael suddenly interrupted, aiming his coffee cup into the bin and missing.
‘Well, that told me!’ Oscar laughed.
‘You’re a theatre boy now, Oz! You’ve got to learn our ways at some point and it’s probably best you know before we get into the theatre and you come face to face with a ghostie!’ Olive poked him in the ribs and sauntered off to take up her position in the scene they were rehearsing.
‘Oz…’ Oscar smiled, enjoying the nickname he’d never been given and enjoying even more that it’d been given to him by her.
‘I really don’t want to be here,’ Olive shouted to the bartender over the music, knowing full well that no one would be able to hear her and those close enough to potentially lip read were too drunk to care.
‘No one does,’ he groaned back and slid a rhubarb gin with elderflower tonic into her hand. ‘On the house, Olive. We never see you here any more.’
‘You remembered.’ She smiled, raisi
ng the glass to him. ‘No, my days of hardcore partying are over, I think. I got too old, too fast!’ She laughed.
‘Well, it’s nice to have you here for a night at least.’ He reached over and squeezed her hand and Olive felt incredibly guilty for not remembering his name.
The entire cast seemed to have eluded her. Familiar faces swam through the crowd but were lost the moment she blinked. It was only then that she spotted the sweaty faces of Tamara and Jane up on a platform above the rest of the drunken crowd, a pole between them, their hair stuck to their faces and alcohol sloshing over the sides of their glasses. Olive couldn’t believe they’d had the outfits they were now wearing with them in their bags, and idly wondered if all women carried slinky dresses and high heels just in case the occasion to wear them suddenly arose, or if Tamara and Jane were anomalies. It didn’t matter to Olive either way. Even if she’d known about the night out prior to leaving her house that morning, she still would have chosen to wear the same clothes.
‘I really don’t want to be here either.’ Oscar’s lips brushed close to her ear and Olive was acutely aware of his hand on her hip. She could feel its warmth through the thin fabric of her London-bus-red dress. Olive took a large swig of her drink and turned awkwardly in the crush at the bar to face him.
‘Do you… do you want to go somewhere else?’ She leant closer to him, but nowhere near as close as he had dared. Oscar blinked slowly, drained the last of his beer and let his hand find hers. He tugged on her fingers and led her as best he could through the crowd. Olive had only had a sip of her drink, but she couldn’t seem to focus on anyone’s faces. Maybe it was the thumping bass of the music, the roar of everyone shouting over each other or maybe it was the fact that every cell in her body was now fixated on the feel of Oscar’s warm fingers wrapped around her palm. Everything else was simply secondary.
The cold air was welcome against their sweaty bodies as they emerged onto the bustling street. They walked mainly in silence past the loud bars and clubs full of people enjoying a night out. Hundreds of words spilled out of the open doors and splashed at their feet. Their own conversation would have been lost amidst the noise, so they spoke only in nervous smiles and in the briefest of brushes with their hands. That said more than enough for both of them. They turned a corner and Oscar finally took Olive’s hand in his, clutching it to his warm chest. It was half past ten at night and he knew just the place to take her.
‘Home!’ He grandly gestured to a large square in front of them, lined with houses. In the centre was a small fenced and gated park, in which Olive could just make out brightly coloured children’s climbing frames through the gaps in the hedges. ‘Well, it used to be for a while, anyway.’
‘No way! I love it around here,’ Olive cried as she crossed the road with Oscar, his heartbeat thudding against the back of her palm.
‘See where the light is up there?’ He took her by the shoulders and pointed to a window on the third floor of one of the tall and narrow houses. ‘That was my room.’
‘Your room?’ Olive queried, looking up at the cream-coloured walls.
‘Well, our room. It was Zadie’s flat.’
‘She doesn’t live there any more?’
‘No. We were going to move into a house together before we split up. She went ahead with the move without me. Still, the bad memories haven’t managed to fog up this place just yet. I miss living there, despite not really missing who I was living with.’
‘She can’t have been that bad?’ Olive laughed. I bet she was, she thought.
‘She was,’ he said. Called it, she thought.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Olive, and she really did mean it, despite enjoying that he didn’t seem too attached to his ex even though they broke up only a few months prior. They were still facing the flat, Olive not wanting to look at Oscar. She always felt more comfortable talking when no one was looking at her and so she afforded him the same courtesy.
‘No need to be. I hated the house she’s in now. It was the house she wanted for her, not the house she wanted for us.’ She felt him shrug. ‘I miss that flat, though. And it means I can’t get into this park any more.’ He turned to face the gated shrubs. ‘BUT, if you’re willing to climb the railings…’
‘You’ve been watching too many movies,’ she laughed, walking to the black railings and giving them a jiggle to test their strength.
‘Just one,’ he confessed.
‘Notting Hill?’
‘Bingo.’ He kicked a stone with his shoe that pinged against the gate.
‘Well, I’m not willing to climb these railings,’ Olive said, taking a step backwards.
‘Not even if I hoist you over the top?’ He interlinked his fingers and spread out his palms as a foothold.
‘Not even then,’ she said, taking another step away from him, her back hitting a green electrical box.
‘Really?’ Oscar looked into the park he used to love so much. He’d never been in at night, but he thought it might have a bit of magic to it when it was free of screaming kids and exhausted parents.
‘Only because there’s no need.’ Her hands rummaged behind her back and after a swift bit of feeling around, Oscar heard six short beeps followed by a long one and then a thunk. Olive brought her hands in front of her and presented him with a key.
‘What on Earth? How the hell have you done that?’ Oscar snatched the key from her fingers, examining it closely.
‘A friend of mine lives in one of these.’ She pointed to one of the lit windows in a house on the square. ‘That one, I think. After shows we used to meet up here for a drink and then crash in his flat. He keeps his keys in this little coded box here because he’s sure he’ll lose them otherwise. Once I learnt the code, I never forgot it!’ She grinned. ‘I’m sure he won’t mind us borrowing them.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ he laughed.
‘What?’
‘Nothing… I just didn’t have you pegged as a late-night-drinking, throwing-caution-to-the-wind kind of gal!’
‘Oh, I’m full of surprises!’ she winked, hoping her moment of coolness wasn’t short-lived.
Up until now, Olive’s life had seemed to consist of a series of wacky events. She’d trained at drama school and had been plunged headfirst into the industry as a leading lady with little to no time to adjust. Olive had soon discovered that when you were a name in theatre it often meant nothing in the ‘real world’ outside of the stage door. Sometimes fifty people could be waiting for you when you finished for the night, but then you’d get the bus home with the spare change at the bottom of your pocket and eat Super Noodles for your dinner.
Outside the bubble of the theatre, she was simply Olive Green. No fame, no fortune, but that didn’t matter to her because the love of it was more than enough. The love of it was the reason. The lights, the costumes, the sequins, the programme that listed the names of all the people that contributed to the magic on stage… Olive had wanted to be a part of it from the first performance of Beauty and the Beast she had seen aged six.
This was the job of a lifetime for her and although she often had less experience than most of her peers in the principal cast, Olive made up for it in her dedication to the craft and simply by being easy to work with.
Oscar wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulled her into him and ruffled her hair. ‘Come on, then!’ He skipped ahead of her to the gate with a boyish bounce. The key slotted into the lock and he paused before he turned it. ‘You better not be lying to me, Green.’
‘Turn the key and see,’ Olive laughed.
‘There’ll be hell to pay, Green!’ he said as he turned the key and pushed the gate open. ‘YES!’ He cheered and a light flickered on in a house above them.
‘Shhhh!’ she hushed, running into the park, closely followed by Oscar who shut the gate behind them and shushed Olive back until the cacophony of shushes was louder than his cheer had been in the first place.
Inside, the children’s play area was small and a littl
e lacking. A small green slide, a yellow plastic horse on a thick spring that wobbled about when you sat on it, and a platform with red handles to hold onto that spun round and round.
‘I’m sure to little kids who don’t really know any better, this is brilliant,’ Oscar laughed.
‘It might look a little disappointing to your jaded adult eyes, but when you’re a bit drunk, this thing is the best,’ Olive said, expertly hopping onto the spinning platform and making it turn in one smooth glide.
‘Who’d have thought innocent Miss Green was such a rebel, eh?’ Oscar said, taking the handles and slowly starting to spin her around.