Valentine (12 page)

'Are you still seeing her?'

Jack sighed. 'I did sleep with her a couple of times
after we split up, but we're not together anymore.'

'She still carries a torch for you though, doesn't she?'
Valentine persisted. 'That was obvious.'

'Yes, but it's completely one-sided.'

'She's very beautiful,' Valentine said.

'Very,' Jack agreed. 'And very high-maintenance,
neurotic, jealous and possessive, which is why I split up
with her.'

'So why still see her?'

'I try hard not to, but as you've noticed she's very
persistent. I've figured out it's better to see her every now
and then, as friends, because I want to keep in touch with
her daughter, Ruby. Anyway, please let's stop talking about
her; it depresses the hell out of me. I'm not interested in
Julia; only in you and me.'

A pause. 'Jack, I can't see you, at least not until the
play's finished; it's too much.'

'Are you going to shut your eyes when we're on stage
together then?' he said, trying to make light of her
declaration.

'You know what I mean,' she replied, looking ahead
so she didn't have to see his face.

'So you'll see me when the play's over?' he asked
hopefully. 'I'll hold your knickers captive until you do.'

'Let's just see how it goes,' she replied, proud of herself
for appearing so cool, but inside feeling the loss of his
company already. 'You seem to have so much going on
in your life.'

'And what about you?' Jack asked. 'There are plenty
of things you haven't told me, aren't there? What about
Finn?'

Valentine ignored him and quickened her pace.

'Wait.' Jack put his hand on her arm to get her to stop,
then reached inside his jacket for his diary. He took out
a pen and flipped through the pages, then he circled a
date and held it up for her to see. He had marked the
nineteenth of April, the day after the last show. 'So we
have a date then?' he asked hopefully.

'OK,' Valentine replied, suddenly wondering how she
was going to last five weeks.

There then followed the final week of rehearsals, where
Valentine felt she was going cold turkey. The fact was that
she really missed Jack. She restricted herself to only looking
at him when she thought he couldn't see, to only talking
to him when there were others present. And he kept to his
side of the bargain: not seeking her out, no more intimate
late-night phone calls. She felt bereft. She hadn't realised
how much she loved his company. But she tried not to be
distracted – she had the play to focus on and it was really
coming together. During rehearsals there was a sense of
energy as the drama unfolded and connections were made
– except with Xander who had a wonderfully rich voice,
but who delivered his lines as if he had no idea what he
was actually saying, however many times VPL went through
it with him. But Valentine, whom VPL had praised repeatedly
for her comic and sensuous performance, felt
completely ready for the play to open. That was, until she
was presented with her costume.

'OK, tell me honestly, what do you think?' Valentine
was standing in front of Lauren dressed only in the gold
briefs (mercifully VPL had agreed that she didn't have to
wear the thong) and matching gold nipple tassels that
made up her Titania costume. All that was missing was
the gold body paint.

Lauren wolf-whistled. 'Have you ever considered a
career in lap dancing?'

'I meant, do I look fat?' Valentine exclaimed in exasperation.
Lauren never got it, because she had never felt or
looked fat in her entire life.

'No, you look curvy and delicious,' Lauren replied.

'So I do look fat then,' Valentine shot back, unable to
take Lauren's words as a compliment. She'd been working
so hard to lose weight, running and swimming every day
and cutting down on the evil carbs. But evidently it had
all been in vain. She was still a porker.

'You don't look fat at all!' Lauren told her. 'I promise.'

'I can't believe that I've actually got to wear this outfit!'
Valentine groaned, peeling off the cursed nipple tassels
and dropping them on to her dressing table with an expression
of complete disgust.

'Tomorrow's the dress rehearsal and I've got to wear
them in front of Jack for the first time. It's going to
be mortifying. It will definitely be the end of him
fancying me – if he does still fancy me, after I gave
him the brush-off.'

'He fancies you,' Lauren told her. 'He's burning for
you, baby.'

'No, no, he'll see Emily flitting about in her white see-through
dress all slender and size zero and realise his
mistake. Who wants a golden porker when they can have
a beautiful nymph?'

A massive eye-roll from Lauren. 'I'm here for you, girlfriend,
but if you keep going on about how you're fat
when you're not, I will start talking about my teeth.'

'Deal.' Valentine reached for her dressing gown. Lauren
could talk about her teeth all night.

By the time the dress rehearsal arrived she was in a state
of near-meltdown over the tassels. Usually she loved
getting changed into her costume – it was part of the
transformation into the character – but not today. It was
an hour and a half before the play started and in the
dressing room the Twirlies had already stripped off and
were wandering around half-naked, totally un-self-conscious
about displaying so much flesh, but Valentine
reflected that if she'd had a body like theirs she'd be the
same. She sat hunched up in front of the mirror, delaying
as long as she could the awful moment when she would
have to strip off in the less-than-glamorous dressing room.
It smelled of damp, stale perfume and hairspray. The
facilities were limited to a sink, a shower (both of dubious
cleanliness), a kettle and a rail for their costumes, but at
least it was single-sex. Valentine had been dreading that
they might have to share one with the boys, as she had
on other productions. There was a long horizontal mirror
on one wall, against which was a dressing table with space
enough for six chairs. Valentine had made sure that she
was sitting next to Kitty and Zara and at the opposite
end of the table to Emily, who was openly continuing her
pursuit of Jack, even though he'd given her no encouragement.
Probably someone as ravishing as her wasn't
used to rejection.

Valentine fiddled with her make-up, which she'd carefully
arranged. Like a lot of actors she was a bit OCD
about dressing-room rituals and she always had to have
a purple towel and Chanel foundation and eyeliner.

'Shouldn't you be getting changed?' Kitty asked, sitting
on the chair next to Valentine. She was already in her
costume, a pretty lilac chiffon dress with a fitted bodice
and flowing skirt.
No nipple tassels for her
, Valentine thought
enviously. She sighed. It was now or never.

Under the cover of a black towelling robe she reluctantly
took off her clothes put on the gold bikini briefs
and immediately wrapped herself back in the robe, which
had a hood and which she was sure made her look a little
like Obi-Wan Kenobi. The four other fairies – Pease-
Blossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustard-Seed had by now
put on their briefs and nipple tassels and she tried to tell
herself there was safety in numbers, even though they all
had bodies to die for.

But at least she didn't have to wear a thong like Robbie,
who was playing Puck. He had arrived at the dress
rehearsal in a complete state after opting for a back, sack
and crack wax, in order to pull off the skimpy garment.
He had tears in his eyes when he came into the girls'
dressing room and recounted how excruciatingly painful
the procedure had been. But he had come to the wrong
place for sympathy. Kitty gave him short shrift. 'Robbie,
women have been waxing for centuries, or maybe even
millennia, so get over yourself ! Also we have to undergo
a little thing called childbirth, remember? And what's that
compared to a few ripped-out follicles?' Exit Robbie, much
chastened.

'Oh, don't be so hard on the poor boy,' answered Dixie
the make-up artist, who was doing their make-up free for
her CV. She was a complete sweetie. She had obviously
read the make-up artist bible which stated:
Thou shalt only
ever be lovely to thy clients and make them feel good about themselves,
however bloody annoying and demanding they are.
'Now
come on Valentine, I need to do your body paint.'

Dixie was Welsh, slightly overweight – the fate of
many a make-up artist, doomed to spend so much of
their time sitting around – but gorgeous, channelling a
Marilyn Monroe look with platinum-blonde hair and
scarlet lips. She had a lovely temperament: calm, unflappable
and tactful; she was bound to go far in her
profession. 'You'll need to take off the robe, my love,'
Dixie told her gently, and sighing heavily Valentine
obeyed. Quickly Dixie got to work, expertly smoothing
the paint over Valentine's bare skin, giving her instructions
about how to stand and what part of her body to
move. 'Just open your legs a little wider could you? I
need to get to your inside thighs; that's lovely,' she said,
kneeling in front of her.

'I just hope you've got enough paint to cover the massive
surface area,' Valentine said bitterly, as an unpleasant
image flashed into her head of a turkey being basted.

'Valentine, you're going to look absolutely lush when
I've finished with you, I promise – like a fairy Bond girl!'
Dixie continued.

'She died you know,' Valentine said gloomily. 'If you
mean the one in
Goldfinger
.'

'Ooh, I'd forgotten all about that! I wonder what would
be the quickest way to go? Poisoned by gold being sprayed
over your entire body or drowning in that lift like that
poor Eva Green in
Casino Royale
.'

'Probably drowning,' Valentine replied, feeling grateful
to Dixie for taking her mind off her thighs, even if it was
by discussing death.

'Still, at least she copped off with Daniel Craig first,'
Dixie continued. 'That scene when she's in the shower
and he sucks her fingers gives me goosebumps, and don't
even get me started on the blue trunks! I tell you he can
solace my quantum any day of the week!'

Lovely as the thought of Daniel Craig solacing anything
was, Valentine was not to be distracted from her current
situation. 'Are you sure you can't do that body-contouring
thing that all the stars have done to make me look
slimmer?' she whispered.

'Sorry love, I don't have a spray gun and anyway you
don't need it, I promise! There now, all done.'

Finally Valentine got to see the result in the mirror. To
her huge relief it wasn't nearly as bad as she'd feared.
She had been dreading looking like a monster from
Dr Who circa nineteen seventy-five, but the gold paint
had a sheer texture and gave her skin a glittery, luminous
glow which was actually quite flattering, though probably
not one she was planning to repeat off-stage. Her hair
had been curled to make it even wilder than usual, and
the tips sprayed with gold – she looked exotic, and actually,
sexy. She was about to reach for her Obi-Wan Kenobi
robe but Dixie stopped her. 'You can't wear anything I'm
afraid; the paint will come off. I'll go and get an electric
heater so you can keep warm.'

Valentine could have done without being practically
naked in front of the ravishing Emily, who had absolutely
no worries about stripping off. She had been wandering
around in a sheer bra and thong for what seemed like
ages before finally putting on her costume.

'I bet she was hoping Jack saw her in her undercrackers,
silly cow,' Kitty whispered to Valentine. 'Not because he
wants to, but because she wants him to,' she added hastily,
seeing the look on Valentine's face.

'I bet he would like to,' Valentine said gloomily. But
Jack didn't come into their dressing room. All the other
male members of the cast popped in at various intervals
for a chat or to make themselves a coffee, or in Xander's
case to have a good gawp at the Twirlies. Rufus came in
to give Kitty a good-luck kiss; Toby sweetly gave all the
girls a flower each for luck. Valentine steeled herself for
cheeky comments about the costumes but none came –
in fact no one even commented on the nipple tassels. It
was both reassuring and slightly bonkers, as if they were
all ignoring the elephant in the room.

The half was called and the boys left the dressing room.
The half was actually thirty-five minutes before the
performance started and even though it wasn't the real
thing, Valentine got an adrenalin-charged rush as if it
was. It became quieter then, with less gossiping and
giggling. Every actor was different in how they prepared
to go on stage – Kitty went into some yoga stretches,
while Valentine just liked to be silent and get into character
in her head. From next door they could hear Xander
doing some frankly annoying vocal warm-ups. Then Zara,
the lovely Twirly, started whistling 'Always Look on the
Bright Side of Life'.

'What the fuck are you doing?' Emily shrieked at her
like a banshee, her pretty face contorted with outrage –
not so pretty now, Valentine thought. 'Go outside this
minute, turn round three times, knock on the door and
then come back in. And no fucking whistling!'

'Oh take a chill pill!' Kitty replied. 'You're not seriously
hung up on that old superstition, are you? I bet
you don't even know where it comes from, do you?'

Emily curled her lip petulantly and gestured to Zara
to get out. Zara decided to humour her and elegantly
tiptoed out of the room on her demi points like a prima
ballerina, closed the door behind her, then knocked on it
a few seconds later and arabesqued back in.

'It doesn't matter that I don't know where it comes
from; I just know it's bad luck, as bad as naming the
Scottish play!' Emily shot back.