Free Fallout by Sadie Jones Page A

to. She had been left out. She had deserved it.
    From her corner, she watched Chrissie put on her make-up as if nothing else existed in the world but her own face.
    The knock at the door.
    ‘Five minutes. Full house.’
    A brief silence, a smothered explosion of whispers. Laughter. Hope. Five minutes .
    Chrissie turned to her, a hairpin in her mouth. ‘Nina, are you all right?’
    ‘Fine. Good luck.’
    And Chrissie smiled and turned away. Nina climbed into her clumsy stiff costume and was grateful for its black disguise. She hid behind her make-up, the shell of years, and envied Anfisa her station; the limited desires of the servant in Chekhov’s fragile stage-house.
     
    The lights came up on an almost bare set, a few pieces of polished nineteenth-century furniture, out of place in the modern square, suggesting a large drawing room. Upstage and centre was a square opening, brightly lit, through which shone white sunlight on silver trunks, a dream exterior. Three young women were seated on the stage. Luke felt a stab of recognition as they began to talk because he knew the play so well. Hearing it spoken gave him a rush of emotion, as words that he had felt existed only in the limited contract between his eye and the page were given life.
    For three hours he alternated between Chekhov and sex. Thinking too hard, feeling too much, the thrill of new experience always jolted him to raw desire. Intensely focused, he studied the actresses. The men interested him less and looked silly in their false moustaches. It was a woman’s play and he had thought it funnier when he read it – not comedy, but treading the path of its story more lightly. This Three Sisters seemed all-out tragedy. The maid, Anfisa, came on after some time, and Luke pitied her her thankless task, eighteen playing eighty and not much to say. He mentally de-wigged and stripped her of her apron before turning back to the amber-haired girl who was complaining about her life. Her voice was limited. And it saddened him, having read her, that Irina should be belittled by this girlish telling.
     
    Marianne waited for Nina in the emptying foyer.
    ‘You were forever!’
    ‘I had to get my make-up off. I looked like a hag.’
    ‘Come on,’ hissed her mother, furious.
    ‘Was I all right?’
    ‘This is hopeless.’
    Marianne pushed ahead through the crowd, stopping once to kiss a man’s cheek and introduce Nina, who didn’t catch his name and felt only shame and embarrassment that they were running out as others stayed to talk and meet, names and glances exchanged, compliments, the happy thrill of afterwards that she, for some reason, was being denied.
    ‘Your Chrissie Southey is a pill,’ said her mother.
    ‘Shh! She’s just there. Shouldn’t we stay?’ Nina leaned closer and whispered, ‘Mummy! Agents!’
    Her mother laughed, shortly. ‘Not for you, darling, not this time. Would you mind if we just got out of here? It’s dreadful . . .’
    Nina realised her mother was embarrassed to be her mother and not somebody else’s. Then her arm was grabbed by Tad Lambert. The thinning crowd threw them together.
    ‘Nina!’ he laughed, inches from her face. ‘Come to the pub with us.’
    ‘Congratulations, you were marvellous,’ said Marianne warmly. ‘You all were.’
    ‘Thanks.’ He let go of Nina, grinned and met her eye. ‘Can I kidnap your daughter?’
    Nina could have hugged him, there was something to be salvaged from the evening; with only months to go before they were all parted, she had friends.
    ‘Mummy?’
    ‘Not too late . . .’
    Just behind him, Paul and Luke left the theatre. Nina registered them as they crossed the edge of her vision; two young men, one dark, one fair, arresting her attention for a moment before she looked back at Tad, and smiled, and let go of her mother’s arm.
    ‘See you later, Mummy,’ she said, and watched her leave with rebellious delight.
     
    Paul put up his collar in the doorway and Luke, as had been his