If the Dress Fits (20 page)

Callie glanced down the corridors hoping for a glimpse of Theo. She knew he would be waiting in the wings and, despite the awkwardness when she’d spoken to him on the phone the previous night to arrange dinner, she wanted to wish him luck. After their meeting at Harewood House she had spent a lot of time wondering if forgiveness of Theo’s actions three years ago would be the route to salvaging some kind of relationship. Hope had been an elusive friend these last few months, but she still retained her belief in its restorative power. However, as she peered round the corner towards the band’s dressing room, she saw they were protected from the braying public by several burly security guards.

‘I’m sorry, ladies, this is a sterile area. No one goes in, not even the band’s mothers. You’d better go find your seats. Late arrivals will be locked out,’ the guy threatened with a soupçon of glee.

‘Come on, Cal. Let’s grab a drink in the bar whilst the support band’s playing.’

They made their way up the majestic staircase swathed in plush claret-and-gold carpet, to the Grand Circle bar where they ordered two glasses of Prosecco rosé, which produced no change from a twenty-pound note.

‘Hey, Nessa? Is that you?’

A gloriously handsome man in his late twenties with bouffant blond hair and startlingly blue eyes strode over to where the girls were perched on bar stools sipping their drinks. He held his palm outstretched to greet Nessa who smirked at Callie’s raised eyebrows.

‘Harvey! What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, God, I’m in desperate need of an alcoholic injection of strength to endure the privations of the next hour. I’m here with my niece and two of her friends. My brother took out a mortgage to pay for the tickets for them to see The Razorclaws and it turns out he’s away on business in Germany tonight so he couldn’t come. I suspect foul play.’ Harvey smiled and tiny dimples appeared in his cheeks like commas around his plump pink lips. ‘I have to admit, I’m surprised to see
you
here, though. A sporting event at Wembley or Twickenham or Lord’s, yes, but not at a rock gig filled with screaming adolescents! Don’t you see enough of them at school?’

‘Oh, Callie and I grew up with a couple of the band members. Sorry, Harvey, this is my best friend, Callie. Callie, this is Harvey Adams. He was a drama teacher at St Hilda’s before fame came calling and he scooted off to the bright lights of Manchester.’

‘I’m delighted to meet you, Callie.’ Harvey lifted her fingers to his lips.

‘Yes, I’m an act
or
.’ He flicked his floppy blond fringe from those bright blue eyes and graced them with his bleached smile. Callie felt Nessa stiffen at her elbow, knowing she was stifling a chuckle.

‘You may have seen me in
Death in the Aire
– the gritty detective series set in West Yorkshire?’

‘Oh, yes, I have,’ Nessa said, much to Harvey’s blatant delight. ‘On BBC4? What part did you play?’ She scrunched up her nose as she tried to recall the series.

‘I played the murder victim. A difficult and challenging role to get right, but of course I managed to nail it. I’m nothing if not professional. The director told me I have a bright future playing the dead and dying,’ Harvey boasted without a hint of irony, ‘and those scenes are often pivotal to the plot, I find. If you’re interested, Nessa, perhaps you’ll allow me to talk you through my last role as a firefighter who fell to his death whilst tackling a blazing clock tower. The demands on the actor can be strenuous, but fame and celebrity must be secondary to the sense of pride at having contributed to the whole ensemble.’

Callie sucked her lips between her teeth to prevent her mouth from twitching as she felt Nessa shaking with an onslaught of barely repressed giggling.

‘Can I offer you ladies a drink? You know, I have some promotional photographs I could autograph for you. One never knows when one might be recognised and it’s prudent to be prepared. Wouldn’t wish to let a fan down. Fame is an onerous burden, but us actors must bear our responsibilities with stoic fortitude.’

Harvey flashed his pearly whites again at a nonplussed Nessa, who’d been rendered temporarily speechless.

‘Erm, thanks, Harvey, but I think we need to go and find our seats.’

‘Toodle-loo, then. Have fun. Maybe we can catch up later?’

Inside the airless auditorium, the noise was incredible. Every perch was occupied; every gilt-framed box had been pressed into service. The crowd was made up of ninety per cent teenage girls and ten per cent concerned parents who’d been unwilling to allow their offspring to attend the concert unchaperoned and who wore expressions of reluctant stoicism.

‘I think you’ve made a friend.’

‘You mean Harvey?’

‘Yes. He’s very attractive, if a little overconfident. I think he might wear coloured contact lenses, but I saw the way his eyes lingered on yours. And you already know each other.’

Nessa gifted her best friend with a roll of her eyes as she pushed her way along the third row to take her seat.

‘I’m so excited,’ she squeaked in Callie’s ear. ‘This is the first time I’ve been in a West End theatre. Do you remember that pantomime we staged in Year Ten? What was it? Oh, yes,
Peter Pan
, remember? You were a full-blown pirate and I was a lowly deckhand. We had a blast!’

‘You had a blast, Nessa,’ Callie corrected her. She’d hated every minute of being on the stage. ‘I’m not blessed with the same bare-faced confidence you are. Never again! But I tell you who
was
excellent and a huge surprise. That girl who played Captain Hook from Year Nine? What was her name again?’

‘Lillian Greenwood?’

‘Yes, I’d never noticed her before. Always thought she was one of those geeks who kept herself to herself and preferred the more cerebral pursuits. Nose always stuck in a classic? She certainly never ventured onto the sports field, unlike you, Nessa – the girl who’s won every trophy going’.

Nessa giggled. ‘Remember when we made Mr Barringer walk the plank for a laugh at the end of the show?’

‘I do, and I’d be prepared to bet my last pound that the experience will live on in his nightmares until the day he leaves the earth. That was a nasty ankle sprain.’ And the girls doubled over in fits of laughter.

‘I couldn’t do what Theo and Archie do, though. Stand up there in front of all these people and sing their hearts out. I’m not sure which is the most terrifying – performing to an arena full of avid, all-forgiving fans or to a more discerning audience at a celebrity wedding where the groom is a world-famous musician. Both are gut-wrenchingly scary!’

‘Totally agree. All
I
had to do was deliver my wedding gown creation along with a little piece of my soul, wrapped in tissue paper in a cardboard trunk, and then sit back and await the devastating rejection of my talents, not parade it live in front of a room full of music industry professionals.’ Callie indulged in an involuntary squirm of sympathy.

‘But your design wasn’t rejected, was it?’

‘No, but for a time I thought it had been. It’s a painful experience that I have no wish to repeat any time soon.’

As the noise reached maximum decibel level, a beanpole-thin guy clutching a clipboard like a shield, decked out in the black uniform of all stage and screen crew, his microphone strapped to his cheek with a Band-Aid, stepped onto the stage and proceeded to ask for quiet.

Immediate silence ensued.

‘Okay, ladies and gents, as you know this is The Razorclaws’ rehearsal gig for the wedding of the decade between Finn Marchant and Lilac Verbois, which will take place up in Yorkshire in two weeks’ time.’ A huge roar of approval rolled out of the stalls and reverberated around the room. ‘You are about to hear a selection of the band’s bestselling songs and, I’m excited to announce, a ballad that is being debuted this evening, written by their lead singer, Theo Drake!

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you… The Razorclaws!’

Chapter Twenty-Four

A tsunami of screams roared into the auditorium coupled with whistling and foot-stomping. Callie exchanged a glance with Nessa and they joined the throng in leaping from their seats and applauding. A surprise swirl of nausea assaulted Callie’s throat and chest. Her heart pounded and her stomach muscles clenched with a mixture of excitement and nerves, and something else she was reluctant to name. She attempted to stretch her lips into a smile but failed. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as the crystal-clear notes of a bass guitar seared through the air.

But it was when Theo, her Theo, strode onto the stage, grabbed the microphone from the stand and stared out into the crowd that her knees crumbled from under her. As he launched into a rendition of their most recent number one, she sank down onto the burgundy velvet seat, drawing in huge gulps of oxygen to steady her emotions, annoyed with her reaction to seeing him up on the stage after three long years apart.

For God’s sake, she had seen him perform with The Razorclaws hundreds of times when they were at school and university. Okay, she knew nothing of his new material and had had no idea what to expect that evening. But the years rolled back and he looked exactly the same as when she’d fallen in love with him, with his eyes that sparkled like silver buttons and his quirky personality, not to mention his spiky, honey-blond hair and honed, muscular body.

As she peered between the breaks in the crowd, she drank in his onstage presence. He exuded an almost ferocious magnetism. He’d chosen black Armani jeans and a matching shirt, open at the neck to reveal not only a glimpse of golden chest hair, but also a glint of silver that caught Callie’s eye and whipped her breath away. There, poking from the folds of his shirt, was that stupid St Christopher chain she had bought him for his eighteenth birthday and which he had sworn to her he would never remove.

Callie leant towards her knees, her forearms clenched into her stomach.

‘What’s up, Callie?’

‘Oh, erm…’

Nessa sat down next to her. ‘I know, darling, I know. You still love him, don’t you?’

‘No, no, I…’

‘Come on, stand up or you won’t be able to see anything.’ Nessa linked her arm through Callie’s reluctant one and dragged her back to standing.

The next forty minutes flashed by like a dream. Callie was swept away on a tidal wave of memories stretching back fifteen years to the first time Theo had held her hand in the playground at their primary school. The music playing tonight was the accompanying score to every important event of her life; something she had found solace in when she’d cried herself to sleep on the days when the loss of her parents was the most acute, like on their wedding anniversary or at Christmas or on her birthday.

She’d made a half-hearted attempt not to follow Theo’s most recent success, as reading about him in magazine or newspaper articles only brought the pain of losing him flooding back. But she was a masochistic fool and had downloaded a selection of his music to her iPod, listening to the lyrics endlessly to dissect their meaning until her brain was fried and the pain once again became ragged and raw.

She was jolted back to reality as she realised the auditorium had quietened.

‘Thank you, everyone. Have you all had fun tonight?’ Theo’s familiar voice boomed over the sound system.

A roar of approval rippled over the crowd.

‘Okay, this is our final song. It’s a ballad I wrote several years ago, but every word is still valid today. I hope you like it.’

Theo nodded across to Archie who struck the first chord. He smiled at his childhood friend and then flicked his eyes along the length of the third row until he’d picked out Callie’s face.

She tried to avert her eyes but the music demanded her attention with a mesmeric force. She stood motionless, captivated by the powerful rock ballad Theo was belting out right at her. Goosebumps spread the length of her body and the roots of her hair prickled against her scalp. As she listened to the poetic lyrics she wondered whether each word was really directed at her. She was tempted to discard the thought as egotistical nonsense. Since they’d split, Theo had no doubt had his pick of attractive and available girls, she knew that. Even though he frequented her dreams, it did not mean she still inhabited his.

As the final notes of the song died away, there was a brief pause before a burst of thunderous applause erupted into the auditorium and the crowd surged forward with whoops and whistles. The Razorclaws stalked from the stage and the audience continued to scream, clap and stamp their feet as they demanded an encore. It took a full five minutes for Clipboard Man to restore calm and ask everyone to leave the theatre in an orderly fashion.

Callie’s emotions boiled over. She could no longer hold back the tears of joy for the magic Theo had created on stage. The lyrics he’d sung spoke of the intensity of love, the cauldron of emotions its many guises stirred and the agony of its loss. In that moment, she knew he had suffered just as much as she had during their separation and she could hold back her true feelings no longer.

If nothing else, she needed Theo’s friendship in her life. Her heart escaped from its prison of misery and loneliness and her spirits lifted. She felt jubilant at The Razorclaws’ success that evening and about the forthcoming honour of playing at Lilac and Finn’s wedding reception. And she would be there to see them perform, she promised herself. It was time to make amends with Theo. This night would go down as one of the best of her life.

‘I’m so happy for them, Nessa. They deserve all their success, especially Theo. I think it’s time I made my peace with him, don’t you?’ Tears smarted at Callie’s eyes as she sought her friend’s reassurance.

‘At last! Come on. Let’s use those backstage passes!’ Nessa screamed, dragging Callie against the flow of the departing throng to the corridor that led to the rear of the stage. The girls flashed their privilege passes at the surly security guard and rushed to the door of the band’s dressing room. Someone had pinned a huge golden star to its glossy exterior on which the band members’ names had been scrawled with green glitter pen – Theo, Archie, Rick, Danny and Serge.