Yours Is Mine

Grabbing a flustered breakfast and a strong black coffee, Kate tried to make the best of what remained of the morning to start on the proofs that had come through to her. The publishing house seemed to be going through a sci-fi phase, Kate’s least favourite genre, and she laid out the three implausibly titled books in front of her, trying to decide which one to start with. In the end she opted for the one with the title that she actually understood, and had got through three chapters largely putting squiggly underlining beneath words that she was sure could not possibly be in the English language, or if they were must be some sort of private sub-set of language that she was not privy to.

After she had been driven to writing rude comments in the margin she began to realise that she might be approaching the task in the wrong way – someone had clearly decided it was worthwhile publishing this book, which presumably meant that they could understand it, and so presumably her role wasn’t to go through the book generally rubbishing it. She also remembered that Anna had in fact left her a guide from the publishing house about what she was actually required to do, and leafing through it confirmed that her role was limited to commenting on typos, punctuation, non-controversial grammar and type-setting. It appeared she was not supposed to query the plot or re-order paragraphs, and particularly not delete the ones she didn’t like. That was someone else’s job, and apparently the sub-plot concerning floating brains engaged in projecting active thought despite being in cauldrons full of so-called ‘space plasma’ was to be allowed to stay. She felt very glad she had started off in pencil and rubbed out her angry extraneous comments and went through the next two chapters restricting herself to more conventional intervention.

Given this set-back, and the pressing deadline of the middle of the following week (why were these books so long – how much was there really left to say about aliens?), she decided there wasn’t time to look over the speech for class again, and so it was a rather nervous and introverted Kate that showed up to the adult education centre after lunch, clutching a sandwich in the vague hope that she would be able to eat it surreptitiously at the back of the class. It felt like being a student again – endless time to do things in, but somehow always rushing from place to place with a feeling of guilt at not having done everything she had intended.

She finally found the room in which the class was being held, after navigating what seemed to be a never-ending network of corridors and passages, taking bites of her sandwich as she went. She was beginning to regret the garlic mayonnaise filling she had opted for – pausing to check her breath quickly she winced – and hoped there wouldn’t be any love scenes, or indeed anything that would require her to stand within three feet of anyone else. She dumped the rest of the sandwich in a bin, quickly checked her appearance in a compact mirror and was pleased to see the rather reconstituted chicken hadn’t managed to lodge itself between her teeth, took a deep breath and walked into the room.

It was smaller and stuffier than she had been expecting, with fraying orange carpets and grey windows which looked like they had been hermetically sealed lest heaven forbid any air should get in. There was a small fan whirring in a desultory fashion on a desk in one corner. The other desks had been pushed to the corner of the room and there were about a dozen chairs arranged in a semi-circle in front of a small white board. She assumed the small area in front of the chairs was supposed to be the acting area. She was unimpressed.

Her feelings were apparently evident to the other occupants of the room. Kate noticed a lady standing at the far side of the white board, regarding her with a raised eyebrow and an amused smile.

“Not exactly the Donmar, is it, but I do hope you will feel able to stay with us!”

Kate blushed and, not wanting to cause offence, began muttering an apology.

“Don’t worry, no offence taken. The college has clearly decided to spend their frankly pitiable drama budget on getting the best staff rather than the best carpets – of which I am hopefully a prime example. Hilary Barnet. How do you do – apart from clearly needing some work on your entrances?”

The woman extended her hand after delivering this speech. Perplexed, Kate just about managed to introduce herself with Anna’s name and slunk to a seat while the woman consulted a clipboard.

“Ah yes, Ms Roberts. You were in the indomitable Gregory’s class last year, weren’t you?”

Kate nodded her assent. If this woman said she had been taught by an indomitable person called Gregory and had recorded these facts in her efficient-looking clipboard, who was Kate to argue?

“Yes, well, I shall expect a lot from you then. I didn’t see you in action, but you’re the only one in the class that got moved up to the intermediate level. I imagine you were expecting to be in the studio like last year?” Kate nodded, happy to agree to the easy feed of questions. “Well, don’t worry, this is only temporary – my schedule says we’re moving to the studio in week three after they’ve finished a two-week short course in there. Who knows, perhaps by then you will have learned how to speak in sentences!” smirked the woman, before turning back round to the white board. Kate gasped. She couldn’t believe how rude this woman was being. She saw a couple of the students whispering to each other behind their hands and shooting her covert glances. Kate was beginning to wonder whether she had just stepped into an alternate universe where rudeness amongst adults was acceptable, or else some kind of time warp which had taken her back into school again but by mistake had put her in the life of someone who had done badly and had been bullied.

She was considering leaving while she could, when a man in the chair next to her leaned towards her and whispered “Don’t worry. She’s actually not that bad. I reckon it’s just with each academic year she gets further and further away from the stage so has to create a grand role for herself in the classroom.” He smiled, brown eyes twinkling humorously. Kate laughed, appreciating the man’s attempt to put her at her ease.

“I’m Ben, by the way,” he continued, extending a hand. Kate could smell a musky kind of aftershave as she leant in to take his hand. Realising this meant he could probably also smell her eau de garlic, she made the handshake a fleeting one, though long enough to notice the soft robustness of his hands.

“Hi, Ben. I’m K- Anna.”

“I know,” he countered, winking.

Kate blushed. It was a long time since she had been winked at. Her dad used to wink at her when she was little, but since then she had found that it usually just meant a best-avoided guy was making a lame attempt to reel in a possible conquest. Neil may well have winked at her when they first met; it was the sort of thing he would do. The wink of this Ben individual was more of a friendly wink, though, she decided, showing her that he would be an ally in the class, rather than someone to be cold-shouldered for having lecherous intent. Besides, if he wanted to flirt, there were less attractive people than him, she acknowledged to herself.

Before Kate had time to respond, the tutor had turned back to the class. She stood in the centre of the semi-circle, and allowed her gaze to fall on each of the students in turn.

“Welcome! As you will know, I am Hilary Barnet and I am your tutor for the course. As you should have seen from your course guides, we are going to be focusing on characterisation. With the course only lasting one term we’re slightly limited, I’m afraid. The first few weeks will be about improvisation, working out the moods and expression you can bring in character to particular scenarios.”

That sounded great, thought Kate, smiling. She noticed Ben smiling too and they exchanged a brief glance. Kate returned her attention to Hilary.

“Then we’ll do some brief textual analysis and work towards a semi-staged performance of a couple of scenes so you can apply what you’ve learnt and you can perform to your adoring fans, or rather whatever long-suffering friends and family and possibly a dog you are able to round up.”

“I might bring a cat,” whispered Ben. Kate giggled, eliciting a stern glare from Hilary. Kate looked at the floor while Hilary continued.

“It will be quite a journey that we go on together in the coming weeks – a mental and spiritual one, and in some cases, physical, as you explore all that you can give of yourself to a character.”

There was a giggle at the word “physical” from the two girls who had been whispering earlier, and again they shot glances in Kate’s direction. They seemed to have an inexplicable fascination with her. Maybe it was just ‘new girl’ syndrome. Another glare from Hilary silenced them.

“Right. Let’s get down to it. There are a few familiar faces here, and some people I don’t know so well. I know some of you know each other – or may already have taken the bold step of initiating social intercourse” (giggles again from the two girls) “but as befits a first class today we are going to do introduction exercises.”

Kate relaxed. She needn’t have worried about that Viola speech then, she thought, wiping her hands against her jeans, conscious that her palms had been sweating since she had been in the room. She shot a covert glance at Ben. A friend had told her that everyone, in a relationship or not, did a subconscious ‘Would I or wouldn’t I?’ test when they met a member of the opposite sex to assess if they would sleep with them, if it came to it, so why not get it over with, consciously? Shaggy chestnut hair, slight stubble covering a strong jaw, well-defined eyebrows that showed perhaps the slightest signs of plucking to avoid the dreaded monobrow –

“Right, everyone!” shouted Hilary, clapping her hands. “Let’s get started. You two, work together,” said Hilary, gesturing to Kate and Ben, “and we’ll see what we come up with!”

Damn. She’d missed the instructions. Still, it couldn’t be that difficult.

“Why don’t you go first?” said Kate, turning to Ben. He began to speak, his lips plump and full, Kate saw, but a bit on the dry side. As if on cue, Ben moistened his lips. Kate jerked back slightly, hoping she hadn’t been caught in her assessment. Now she felt like the sleazy one – Ben may have winked at her, but she had almost been mentally undressing him.

“So, you got that?” he queried, looking into her eyes.

Damn. Got what?

“Ben Coltham, live in Camden, and my interesting fact (and blatant plug if it’s your kind of thing) is that I’m a trained water-skiing instructor.”

Ah, the old name, home and interesting fact exercise. Easy. Kate had done this before and had a whole host of interesting facts about herself she could use.

“OK, I’m Anna Roberts and –”

Oh, Christ. She had to give interesting facts about Anna.

Beyond the immensely interesting fact that Anna was currently engaged in an exciting psychological experiment that may or may not be a route to identity theft, she really didn’t know anything interesting about Anna. She could just say she was a psychology student but she didn’t just want to be consigned as dull for the rest of the year.

“And, um, I live in Camden too. Great place, Camden, isn’t it? All those shops, and restaurants, and, um, goths. Really great, those goths.”

Come on, Kate, think of something!

“Two minutes left everyone!” called out Hilary.

Kate began to panic, frantically trying to think of anything off the beaten track she knew about Anna. Internet dating! Yes, that would do – it was a bit different, surely, even these days.

“I’m on an internet dating site and I’ve met someone called Luke!” she blurted out, and immediately wished she could bring the words back in. She would now just be viewed as the desperate girl who shared too much information.

Ben looked surprised. Kate attempted to mock-flirt her way out of her blunder.

“What, are you surprised that an attractive girl like me would have to resort to internet dating?”

He paused. “No,” he said slowly. “It’s more the fact that you’re wearing a wedding ring – I noticed earlier.”

Blast, thought Kate, so she was. She looked down at her ring, as if amazed to see it there. She really ought to have taken it off, but she was so used to wearing it that it didn’t occur to her. She thought quickly, wondering how she could get out of this one. Trust this guy to be the sort to notice wedding rings.

“Divorced!” she yelped.

Ben nodded his head. “That explains it then. Pretty recent I guess if you’re still wearing the ring.”

“Um, yes. Pretty recent. Not strictly speaking divorced yet – just separated,” added Kate, hoping that fictitiously separating from Neil would somehow be less faithless to him than suddenly divorcing him, and slightly more of a white lie than the divorce – after all, he was thousands of miles away so they were separated in that sense. And that way she would only have made Anna married in the space of two minutes, rather than also making her go through a divorce as well.

“It must be tough – well done getting out there again on the internet,” congratulated Ben, looking sympathetic and serious.

“Oh, you know, it’s fine, hadn’t been married all that long, and he cheated on me anyway,” lied Kate, feeling she had to add some verisimilitude, while mentally apologising to Neil, Anna, and Anna’s fictitious husband for making him into such a stereotype.

She pulled her ring off and thrust it into her pocket.

“There! That’s off! And I’m back in the game!” she laughed, hoping she hadn’t just made herself sound like a desperate divorcee. Ben smiled at her, but before he had a chance to respond the tutor called the class to order. They went round the room, and five or so moderately interesting facts were revealed, along with three very drab ones, she revealed Ben’s and then they came to him. Ben paused before the interesting fact.

“And Anna’s fact is that she has successfully got rid of a cheating husband. Sure we all wonder how anyone could cheat on her but there you have it – men are bastards!” he joked, ending with a mock self-deprecating shrug. Most of the class laughed warmly, including Kate, who was flattered at the approach he had decided to take, and impressed that he had now twice made the effort to make someone who he had only just met feel better about themselves. They shared a smile and turned back to the tutor.

“How sweet,” intoned Hilary dryly, noting the shared glance. “But a bold choice of opening fact about yourself – well done. Let’s hope you can put some of that pain into your characters and then perhaps it will all have been worthwhile.”

The class tittered nervously, eyeing Kate as they did so. The two girls who had been giggling at Kate earlier were for their part now looking disgusted. Kate felt that their disgust was directed more at her than at the tutor, and felt vaguely disquieted – perhaps they felt she had given away too much about herself in the first class. She was going to have to work them round somehow – she didn’t fancy having two girls glaring at her for the next two months. For now, she shrugged.

“I’ll do my best – but I won’t send him a thank-you card until I’m quite sure I’m about to launch a stunning acting career!” she joked, and sensed the relief of the class that she hadn’t been offended and that it was safe to laugh. She was conscious of Ben smiling to himself beside her.

This short diversion aside, they were again split up into pairs, and began a series of longer exercises. They each had to tell the other about their day so far, using as much expression in their faces as possible, but within the realms of their own usual facial expressions. The other then had to mimic it back to them, trying to use exactly the same expressions and tone of voice that the other person had used. The next exercise was to go into character and imagine something either very happy or very sad or exciting that had happened recently to their character, and describe it to the other person, and again the other person would have to mimic it back. Kate was easily able to conjure up a diverting account of her morning of proofreading and was happy that it was sufficiently true to Anna’s life to be able to pass it off as her. She enjoyed seeing Ben focusing hard on her features, and laughed to see him try to copy her afterwards.

For her ‘in character’ part, she decided to opt for herself, Kate, and related the story of her dad’s funeral. She allowed herself to shed tears. Ben watched her with avid attention, and Hilary on her rounds came to watch them and nodded approvingly at Kate’s pain. Ben didn’t quite manage to conjure up tears, but he squeezed his eyes up and made his voice crack to register the emotion. Kate for her part had to mimic Ben’s character of being a clown in costume who was in a hurry so had to run for the bus in his character shoes. She wasn’t sure she had done a very good job of it, but Ben made her laugh at both him and herself, and as she wiped tears of mirth from her eyes she was pleased that he seemed again to be trying to cheer her up. Going back into the very real pain of her dad’s death had reminded her of how recent her grief was. She saw how quickly she could be sucked back down into despondency again.

At the end of the class as they were packing away, Ben came up to her.

“That was a good session, partner!” he bantered.

Kate laughed. “You weren’t so bad yourself! Not quite BAFTA level, but give it a few more clown stories and we’ll see,” she joked.

“Well, obviously!” he countered, pretending to preen himself. “I’m practising my acceptance speech already! Seriously though, you did some good work this week – not just with the acting. See you next time, and take care of yourself, right? Remember, this Luke guy may write like a Greek god but he may not look like one,” he advised, locking her eyes in his whilst momentarily touching her elbow.

As he walked away, she reflected that this last comment would be slightly crushing if she was actually pinning her hopes for a revival of her love-life on someone she had met on the internet. It was out of synch with his earlier attempts to cheer her up. She smiled to herself. Perhaps he wanted her for himself? Oh well, he could just go on wanting, she said to herself, slipping her wedding ring back on as she left the room. Still, she allowed a slight strut to slip into her walk and the occasional toss of her hair over her shoulder as she walked to the bus stop, in case he should be looking.

Chapter 10

-Jane-

Jane Robinson paused before sealing up the envelope addressed to Kate Dixon. It was the first packet the firm had sent to Kate since her dad’s death – Peter had dictated the letter that morning. In all the fifteen years she’d been taking dictations from him, Jane had trusted his judgment – and really, it wasn’t her place to query it as a humble secretary, she reminded herself. He’d let the human side of things slip this time, though. True, he’d sent flowers for the funeral (arranged by her, naturally, as was the message telling Kate to take as long as she needed which had – Jane hoped – been duly noted in the card by the florist). But less than two weeks had passed since then. This latest letter with the chapter for Kate to comment on could have had an opening paragraph saying that the firm hoped that she was bearing up after her sad news, or something along those lines, before getting to the business side of things, couldn’t it?

It wasn’t Jane’s job to tamper with what Peter chose to write, though, and she prided herself on the accuracy with which she translated Peter’s dictations into the written word. She’d heard one secretary in another firm had been sacked on the spot for deciding to insert a comma where none had been intended, completely altering the meaning of some highly important final-form legal document leading to red-faced explanations to the client and pleading negotiations with the other side’s legal team. Not good.

Plus Jane knew the partners had behaved pretty well to Kate over the last few months. Sitting outside Peter’s office, she had a fairly good grasp of all the office gossip. There’d been the grey-faced conversations between Peter and Kate, and Peter had very rightly said that if Kate needed to take time off to deal with things, she could do. It sounded like a good deal to Jane – sitting in a pretty bit of Northumberland on half-pay reading a book, someone even printing it out for you, making the occasional comments in red before sending it back in hard copy for Jane to run past Peter. He still liked paper, bless him. Less good for the trees, but better for his eyesight, and he seemed to think Kate would feel the same.

Mostly typos, really, Kate’s comments. If it weren’t for the risk that a stray comma or double negative might in the mystery of law change the meaning entirely, Jane was sure she could almost have done it herself, if it meant getting even half of Kate’s salary (she typed up the annual salary review letters as well, so she knew all about that). There’d been some grumblings in the kitchen from the lawyers that they wished they could just sit at home proofreading a book. Still, it couldn’t have been a fun life to nurse your dying father while taking any spare moment to wade through chapters on the apparent subtleties of commercial leases. Not fun at all.

She bet that things would change now that Kate’s father was actually dead – after all, Kate would no longer have to nurse him. Jane knew that was how some of the other partners saw it, that they’d been trying to convince Peter that they should call her to discuss a date for her to return to work. Peter had protested that Kate was doing good work at home, and that although she wasn’t making money for the firm by doing fee-earning work, she was only on half-pay and that might be translated into profits from the book. Plus the firm had been lucky to get her from London and they wanted to hang on to her, not force her out for personal considerations, Peter had argued. In the end, the compromise had been reached of sending her another chapter to review in a shorter time frame than usual to see how she responded, and if she came back with the chapter in time they would know that she was ready to come back to work. Bit underhand, really. Jane didn’t see why they couldn’t just pick up the phone to her and all talk about it like adults, upfront. They had this inbuilt desire to behave ‘strategically’ and to put everything in writing – even if there had been a phone call it probably would have resulted in a carefully-worded attendance note and a follow-up letter or email that she would have to type.

Anyway, it wasn’t her job to worry about it, she decided, sticking down the lip of the envelope. It was 5.30 on the dot and time for her to be going home to Bill. They were doing chicken lasagne tonight – she’d picked up the ingredients at lunchtime. Glass or two of wine to go with, perhaps early to bed. Very nice.

Poor Kate, Jane thought, as she lobbed the envelope in the post-tray, not being able to have those evenings at home with her husband. Couldn’t be much of a life when Neil was away at sea. She’d tried to ask Kate about it over the kettle, but she’d started chattering on about pizza places or something. They’d bump into Kate in town some weekends, in the cinema or along Gunwharf Quays, her and Bill giggling along, having a fun day out. In the moment before Kate saw them she was always looking glum, fretful. Of course, then Kate’s smile came on, everything was very jolly, and of course she was having a super weekend, she said. But Jane had begun to notice a kind of sadness behind her eyes that never quite went away, even when Neil was actually around to join the office party earlier that year. Masked by smiles of course but undoubtedly still there.

Chapter 11

-Anna-

Acting. That’s all that it was. She could do that. She had always been able to, splitting herself in two according to need. Whatever the role was, she was there. This time the role was Kate – good little wife sending emails to distant husband who she thought wanted news of home and would be interested in whether the guttering needed replacing or if she had felt like she might be getting a cold. True, there had been more thrilling roles, but it would be the performance of a lifetime. Once she got going.