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On her second Saturday without him Merida checked that her wig was secure and then dragged in air.
‘Five minutes to curtain,’ the stage manager called.
‘Thanks,’ Merida called back, glad that the performance was due to start.
Grateful for the escape.
That was what acting gave her.
Merida had long ago found that it was so much easier to play a part than to be herself. Smile here, frown there, look angry... Merida drew on her talent in real life.
When her father’s new girlfriend had made it clear she didn’t want a teenage Merida around, instead of showing hurt she had put on a mask. It was so much easier than revealing herself. And when her mother had remarried, and the awful Mike had treated Merida like a maid—well, that was exactly what she’d pretended to be in her head.
It had made making the beds kind of fun.
And now she got to forget about Ethan and the hurt and be Arrow for the night.
Merida landed on stage—deliberately awkward. She dusted herself down, turned, and found herself in the arms of Married Man. The audience laughed.
For the next two hours Merida forgot the hurt, forgot the pain and fed off the audience’s reaction.
Or rather sherememberedthe hurt andrememberedthe pain and gave it all to her acting, simply poured it into her performance.
‘You’re on fire tonight, Merida!’ Daryl, the director, told her at the interval.
And in the second act she set them ablaze.
Yes, it was an Off-Off-Broadway production, with probably just half of the sixty seats taken tonight, and yet for a short while she simply escaped into her part.
But all too soon it was over, and she was back in the dingy dressing room, peeling off her wig and trying to fathom the fact that it was now sixteen nights without him.
But then there was a knock at the door and finally,finallyhope arrived.
‘Someone to see you,’ Daryl said. ‘You might want to sort out your hair.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Believe me, he needs no introduction.’
Merida raked her fingers through her hair and then put on some lipstick. Her heart seemed to jump into her throat, and when there was another knock at the door she felt a little giddy from trying to remain calm.
Ithadto be Ethan.
She wondered how to play her reaction—and then halted herself as realisation hit. When they’d made love, and on the delicious morning after, she hadn’t been playing a part with Ethan. For the first time in for ever she had been utterly herself.
And so she did not force a bright smile as the door opened—the last couple of weeks had left her too confused for that—and neither did she change her voice for his benefit. And so it was a little unsteady when she called out, ‘Come in.’
Shy, nervous, excited, she watched as the door opened.
‘Merida, your performance just blew me away!’
Merida was possibly the only actress in history who had visibly sagged when the eminent producer Anton Del Bosco introduced himself.
* * *
It was the oddest night.
For it was the night where the dreams she had dreamt for so long finally came true.
