Estelle Park wanted to know whether Ada Selwyn liked children.
Frankie looked at Nina.
Nina looked at the ceiling.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to Ada.”
“Ada isn't here,” Sol said.
“She will be when you pay me.”
They were in a rehearsal room above a small theatre in Brighton, with folding chairs, scuffed mirrors and a window which opened only if someone else held the frame. Nina had hired it for the afternoon because she refused to test entrances in a hotel where people kept entering for reasons of their own.
Frankie had thought that might be part of the problem they needed to rehearse.
She hadn't said it twice.
Estelle stood by the window, holding the two-page description of her invented patron. Early fifties, though Estelle was younger. Former owner of a small publishing company. Private, dry, good at leaving a question unanswered without appearing not to have heard it.
No title. No astonishing acquaintance with anyone famous. Frankie had kept the description spare.
Estelle had written questions in the margins.
“Does she still work?”
“When she likes.”
“Does she like it?”
“Usually.”
“Children?”
“Some.”
Estelle nodded.
“That's useful.”
At the other side of the room, Cal Owen was sitting backwards on a chair. His patron, Hugh Denham, had a quiet interest in furniture. Cal turned the chair towards a lamp, examined one leg and waited until everybody was watching.
“Ada and I know one another.”
“Through the Table,” Frankie said.
“But before.”
“Maybe.”
“Somebody has to have invited me.”
“The house.”
“The house can't send a message.”
“Vivian can.”
“Then I know Vivian.”
Nina took the papers from him.
“Start with what you've actually been given.”
They weren't being hired to impersonate real people. Nina's brief described an evening of theatrical hospitality, a revival of an old supper tradition with invented guests among the real hosts. It said what they would be paid, when, and how long they were expected to remain in character.
It didn't mention the amount Gideon would be asked to give.
Estelle had read it properly. Cal appeared to have read it while thinking of improvements.
Duncan arrived late, carrying the grey jacket over his arm.
“Sorry.”
“Work?” Frankie asked.
“Life. Which sometimes includes work.”
He put the jacket on.
Estelle looked at him.
“You're a performer?”
“No.”
“Excellent. You'll be wonderful until somebody tells you how.”
Nina smiled.
Frankie went to the end of the room.
“Let's begin with Gideon arriving.”
“Who's Gideon?” Cal asked.
“The guest.”
“Do I like him?”
“Not immediately.”
“How much later?”
“We don't know.”
He looked delighted.
Frankie took the guest role herself.
Vivian had agreed to come and then rung to say the hotel's laundry delivery had lost a bag of pillowcases. She considered the linen crisis worse than the actors and intended to arrive after it had acquired a culprit.
For now, Nina stood in for her.
They tried the first entrance.
It was terrible.
Cal rose as though announcing a prize. Estelle turned towards Frankie with so much private history in her face that Frankie thought she'd been recognised. Duncan remained seated because he was holding a pen which he'd borrowed from Sol and was trying to find somewhere safe to put it.
“Again,” Frankie said.
Cal repeated the rise.
“Not so much.”
“What?”
“Everything.”
He sat.
Nina held up her hand.
“Stop a moment.”
Frankie looked towards her.
“You've put everybody waiting in one line. He walks in and three people turn.”
“Yes.”
“Like an interview.”
“A welcome.”
“It isn't.”
She moved Cal's chair. Then Estelle's. Duncan was given a small table borrowed from the wall, where he could put down the pen.
“Be doing something.”
“What?” Cal asked.
“Finding out whether you want to stay.”
Estelle sat, looked at Duncan and said, “Is that the right place for me?”
“I don't know,” he said.
“Would you move if it wasn't?”
“Probably.”
“Kind of you.”
“I'd want the right place too.”
Frankie came in.
Cal didn't rise because he was listening. Estelle glanced towards the door and continued the conversation. Nina greeted Frankie while the others remained people who hadn't paused their lives to provide an entrance.
It was better.
Annoyingly better.
Frankie crossed to Duncan.
“Lorne.”
He looked up.
“Celia.”
“May I introduce Gideon Rusk?”
“You can. I might forget he's you.”
They laughed.
The room loosened.
Sol tried a little sound beneath the entrance, just enough to mark the transition, and Estelle made a face.
“No.”
“Really?” Nina asked.
“It tells us to be lovely. I don't want to be told.”
Sol took it away.
Without the cue, the conversation sounded warmer.
Cal tried again. This time he stood for a reason: he wanted to offer the entering guest a chair while removing his own bag from it. A human problem rather than a flourish.
Frankie could use that.
She wanted to claim it. She waited until he had done it, then said, “Good.”
Nina glanced at her.
Frankie ignored the look.
They broke for tea.
Sol had brought biscuits, cheap enough that everybody had opinions until the packet was empty. Estelle asked Duncan what he really did.
“Optician.”
“Oh. Do I need new glasses?”
“Can you see me?”
“Yes.”
“Then I wouldn't begin by selling you something.”
She laughed.
Cal said he was certain he'd seen Estelle in something.
“You probably have.”
“What?”
“Something you didn't pay attention to.”
Sol took out his phone.
“Wait.”
Estelle leaned over.
“You're not showing them that.”
“I am.”
She made a grab for it and missed.
A bright bathroom appeared on the screen. Estelle stood beside a sink, smiling with a certainty which belonged to toothpaste. Her voice came out of the phone, warmer and clearer than it had been in the rehearsal room.
“That's an astonishing confidence in gums,” Duncan said.
Frankie laughed.
Cal came over to look.
“That's it.”
“Yes,” Estelle said. “That's it. I am paid to convey the conviction that someone's life improves if their mouth looks like mine.”
“Does it?” Nina asked.
“Mine did. It was a good fee.”
Sol stopped the reel before the next job.
“Your work's everywhere.”
“In tiny bursts. Nobody knows my name.”
Frankie looked at the black screen.
“We won't need that smile.”
“I charge extra for it.”
The joke moved on. Cal told them about an advert which had taken two days to film and never appeared because the product had been changed. Estelle said that was luxurious: being paid to keep a bad decision out of sight.
Frankie went to the window.
Brighton moved below them, people with shopping bags, a delivery rider stopping to check a number, someone carrying flowers upside down because nobody had told them not to. Her flat was across the city. She hadn't opened the landlord's follow-up message yet.
There was work she should be doing under her real name.
She turned back towards the room.
Nina was showing Cal how to leave a pause without trying to fill it with better acting. Estelle had taken Duncan's jacket off his shoulder and was flattening the collar where it had folded. Duncan let her.
They looked like company.
For a second Frankie wanted to sit among them and stop being the person deciding what they were for.
Then Nina called her.
“We need Vivian.”
“She'll come.”
“Without her, this isn't the thing you want.”
Frankie rang.
Vivian answered as though all telephones existed to ask her about pillowcases.
“They've found them.”
“Good.”
“Not all of them.”
“We need you.”
“I said I'd come.”
“Today.”
Vivian sighed.
“Give me twenty minutes.”
It took thirty-five.
She arrived carrying a paper bag which, to Nina's visible disappointment, contained no food. Inside was an old place card holder shaped like a leaf.
“This belongs on the Table.”
Sol looked at it.
“It belongs in my grandmother's cupboard.”
Vivian turned towards him.
“Then she has taste.”
The leaf was chipped at the tip. Vivian put it on the small table in front of Duncan and adjusted it.
“It won't show if it faces this way.”
Frankie picked it up to inspect it.
Vivian took it back.
“Careful.”
“It's all right.”
“It survived a great deal before you arrived.”
The room went briefly quiet.
Frankie let go.
Nina moved a chair.
“All right. From the entrance.”
Vivian sat where she was shown, then moved the chair two inches.
“That light is in my eyes.”
Sol adjusted it.
Cal watched Vivian with the delighted attention of a man who'd just been given a better model than his notes.
When Frankie entered this time, the room felt inhabited.
Vivian looked up and said her name. Not Anna. Not Frankie. Celia.
Duncan continued talking to Estelle. Cal moved his bag from the spare chair, and Nina made the space available without seeming to arrange anyone.
Frankie stood in the doorway.
She could have brought Gideon into that.
She knew it.
The wanting was so strong she nearly spoke as herself.
“Again,” she said.
Nina looked at her.
“What didn't work?”
Frankie considered the room. The ease, the ordinary movement, Vivian's careful hand beside the old leaf.
Nothing.
“I want to see it once more.”
“You will,” Nina said. “At the hotel. They're booked until five, and it's five.”
Cal got up first.
Estelle took her coat from the chair. Sol began putting things away.
Frankie looked at the watch she hadn't remembered owning for the last hour.
People could leave while she still wanted them there.
That was going to take some getting used to.