1
Annie Lang stood in the wings waiting for her name to be called and trying to hide the fact that she was trembling and sweating, even though the stage-school theatre was unheated and draughty. She was the last in the long line of hopefuls who had queued there today. She had almost been too late.
‘Weren’t you told nine o’clock prompt?’ the man on the door had grumbled, ticking her name off a long list without actually looking at her.
‘Sorry, I …’ She was so nervous she started pulling a wisp of her pale blonde hair down to her mouth and chewing it: a childish habit that had always earnt her a slap from her mother.
The stage-door keeper was in a bad temper; it was nearly opening time at the local pub and he needed a drink. ‘Never mind the excuses. You were told nine and I shouldn’t send you in there.’ She made an anguished noise; he gave her a quick look then grunted at her. ‘Oh, alright, alright. But you’re the last. Tell them that. Down the corridor, turn right, then left, and join the queue.’
Pale and feeling sick, she followed his directions. She didn’t know this part of London. She lived on the other side of the city; London was a web of little villages whose inhabitants stayed on their own patch most of their lives. She had got lost within minutes of leaving the Underground station. She’d asked someone the way and been misdirected; panic-stricken, she had run round corners, asked in shops, had finally found the street by accident, turning into it, seeing the name on a sign on a wall, and feeling her body sag with sick relief.
Now she was here and she wished she hadn’t come. There were a dozen people still waiting; she’d seen all the heads turn, had felt their eyes strip her, hard with rivalry and fear. One look and they had all smiled triumphantly, turning away again. She was no threat. Annie had almost turned and run then, seeing herself with their eyes. She had always hated looking in mirrors.
She was wearing black leggings and a black T-shirt – so were several other girls, she noticed. Black made Annie look paler than ever, a thin, gawky girl with very big, very blue eyes – her one claim to attention. She wore no make-up because she had had eczema most of her life and any sort of cosmetics could trigger an attack. Her hair was long and straight, almost colourless, it was so blonde. She would have liked to have it all cut off, but her mother got hysterical if she so much as talked about it.
What on earth had ever made her think she could ever make it in the theatre? Her dream was crazy; she didn’t even believe in it herself. She would never have had the nerve to apply, but her mother had stood over her while she filled in the application forms – had even her mother really believed she would get as far as an interview, though?
‘Is that the last one?’ she suddenly heard from the dark auditorium and realised the girl who had been in front of her had finished and gone.
Annie hurried out on to the lit stage and almost stumbled over her own feet. ‘No, there’s me … please … Annie Lang … I’m the last.’
A silence, and she peered out into shadows, could see nothing, then a small pencil light was switched on over a desk, and a man’s face came out of nowhere, gleaming eyes, a widow’s peak of hair, a full, moist red mouth.
‘Annie Lang? How old are you, Annie? You don’t look old enough to … were you on our list? Ah, here you are, got you. Still at school, Annie, right? Seventeen?’
She nodded, dry-mouthed. His eyes were worse than those she had met in the queue. She felt his stare like ants under her skin.
‘Looks about twelve!’ she heard, from someone else – a woman’s voice.
The man ignored that. ‘Tell us something about yourself, Annie. Have you done any acting at school?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘For instance?’
For a second her mind went blank, she struggled to remember, hoping she didn’t look as stupid as she felt, then blurted out, ‘I … was J-Joan of …’
There was faint, quickly smothered laughter somewhere in the seats around him, and she flinched.
Her eyes, accustomed to the dark by then, picked out two other faces, both women, one who wore dangling, glittery earrings, the other wearing pearly lipstick which gave her the look of a phosphorescent marine creature, a decomposing brilliance.
‘Anything else?’ the man asked her.
‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’ She shouldn’t be here; she shouldn’t have come, she hated being laughed at.
‘You played …?’
‘Anne.’ She wished she was dead. Why … why … had she come?
‘How did you feel about the play?’
‘It …’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
She gulped, then blurted out the truth. ‘I got so wound up, doing it, it gave me nightmares.’
She felt their attention. A moment, then the man said, ‘Which of the Shakespeare pieces we suggested did you prepare?’
‘Ophelia.’
The two women smiled again.
‘Why did you choose that?’ asked the man.
She fought not to stammer, her hands screwed into balls. ‘It’s very d-dramatic.’ She could never get what she felt into words. How did you say: madness is terrifying, losing yourself is being sucked into a nightmare? She knew some
thing about it. She had loved her mother’s cousin Edie, who’d often looked after her when Annie was small; now the old lady was senile, didn’t know who she was or even where she was. Annie had only visited her a couple of times. She couldn’t bear to go again after that.
Her class was studying Hamlet that year; its disturbing echoes of madness made her stomach clench. What if her mother … what if it was hereditary? What if she, herself, one day began to forget? How did it feel to be Auntie Edie? Did you know what was happening to you?
‘Begin, please,’ said the voice beyond the footlights, and she jumped back to the present, confused.