Message and warning tone received.
With a sound that was meant to be a quiet sigh, but which came out as a nose-blast of exasperation, Lainie stretched out her calf muscles and flexed her ankles. She still thought it was obscene that his car cost more than most people’s mortgage, but she wasn’t denying it scored well on leg room. The seat was comfortable too. She wiggled her bottom from side to side, enjoying the pliable cushion. A little bounce or two, to test the suspension. Not bad.
The silence suddenly became more pointed, and she looked up into Richard’s aggravated, long-suffering stare.
“I see why you aren’t supposed to transport the infantry without a car seat,” he said, annoyed, and lightly grabbed hold of her knee when she bounced again. “Why can’t you just sit still like a normal person? It’s like being trapped in a small box with Tigger.”
“Speaking of behaving like a sane person,” Lainie retorted, her eyes fixed on his restraining hand, “congratulations on not going off like a Catherine wheel at the fête. Why so civil, mon ami? The little grey cells want to know.”
The skin of her knee was prickling under his fingers. She delicately lifted them away digit by digit, and couldn’t resist an admiring stroke of his fingernails. Hers were never that neat and smooth. Too many applications of polish over the years. His facial skin looked in better shape than hers too, which was a bit depressing when he had greasepaint slathered on it as often as she did and could give her at least six years.
“I don’t know, Tig.” He returned his hand to the wheel and his gaze out the windscreen. “It must be your soothing influence.”
She didn’t bother to respond to that.
They made it to work by ten to four, and already a few people were waiting outside the side doors of the theatre. Lainie stopped to pose for photos and sign a few tickets. It was still surreal every time someone stopped her in the street to ask for a signature, and she doubted if she would ever feel blasé about the compliment. Richard, on the other hand, cut a striding path through the hopeful group without looking at anyone and went straight inside. Apparently the limits of his civility had been reached. A small child started crying when the door banged shut behind him, most likely from fright at the sudden noise, but it seemed to underline Lainie’s embarrassment. She felt she had to linger for an extra five minutes as some sort of poor compensation.
An elderly woman said to her loudly, “Personally, dear, I think you can do better than both of them.”
She was quite chuffed about that as she made her way inside.
Backstage was crowded with cast and crew. Footsteps and voices echoed loudly from the catwalk above the stage, as lighting adjustments were made in the midst of strong disagreement. The acoustics in the Metronome were so good that the resulting profanities would be crystal clear in the cheapest seats.
A grip walked past, laden with equipment, just as Chloe decided to have a costume refitting outside the privacy of her dressing room. The crewman’s concentration naturally faltered when his eyes almost bugged out of his head, and Lainie had to duck to avoid a head collision with the boom.
Ignoring the chaos she had caused with her corsets, Chloe looked up and waved at Lainie. “Hello!” she called, through a mouthful of sandwich. “I hear you’ve been larking about in the Cotswolds with Richard. That must have been fun.”
From anyone but Chloe, that would unquestionably be sarcasm.
“That’s one word for it.” Lainie walked over and held a loose flap of silk for Chloe’s dresser, Theresa, who looked as if she needed about three extra hands. Women had swaddled themselves in a lot of fabric in the olden days. Lainie quite enjoyed the palaver of walking and sitting in her own costume. She had literally got her bustle stuck in the greenroom door during opening week, and Will had had to get in there with his shoulder and wedge her out like a stuck cork. The corseting, she thought they could have dispensed with. Nobody needed a wasp waist.
Theresa hummed gratefully through a mouthful of pins, and Chloe put her hands on her hips, swishing her gown from one side to the other. It was not the most helpful behaviour when they were attempting to resize her clothing without turning her into a voodoo doll.
“I should take Benji for a day in the country,” Chloe said. “The fresh air would do us both good.”
Lainie had no idea if she was referring to her teenage son or her miniature dachshund, both of whom had been named after Chloe’s grandfather. There was no polite way to ask. She settled for a vague, affirmative “Mmm.”
“And it’s nice about you and Richard,” Chloe added, pausing in her fidgeting to smile at Lainie. “I hadn’t really thought about you as a couple, but it seems to fit, doesn’t it?”