The Tortured Rake. Sarah Morgan

      ‘No. I’m telling you that you look perfect for the part. Please try and relax.’

      ‘How can I relax when I’m cast alongside Nathaniel Wolfe? He is sarcastic, cutting, moody… Yesterday when I made that one simple mistake—’

      ‘He just looked at you,’ Katie said soothingly. ‘He didn’t actually say anything.’

      ‘You don’t know how much can be conveyed by the eyes, especially when those eyes belong to Nathaniel Wolfe. When he looks at you it’s like being zapped by a laser.’ Increasingly agitated, the older woman waved her hand towards the door. ‘Go. I need to be around people who understand my temperament.’

      Crabby and irritable? ‘I still have to zip up your dress.’ Katie discovered that her hands were shaking. ‘Look, we’re all stressed—’

      ‘What do you have to be stressed about?’

      ‘Well…’ For a moment Katie almost told her about the meeting she had with a top British costume designer and how much was riding on it. She almost blurted out that her debts were so scarily huge she spent her nights creating mental spreadsheets, trying to find a way of paying everything she owed. But if all went well tomorrow, then that would change. This was her big break.

      Misinterpreting her silence, the actress made an impatient sound in her throat. ‘You have no idea what it’s like acting opposite a Hollywood star. You have no idea how it feels to know that every single person in that audience has come to see him.’ She turned the full force of her wrath onto Katie. ‘My dress could split and everyone would still be looking at him! I could be naked and no one would notice!’

      Horrified by that thought, Katie took several deep breaths. ‘Please calm down. It’s just opening-night nerves. Everyone feels the same.’

      ‘Everyone except Nathaniel Wolfe,’ the actress snapped. ‘He’s as remote as Antarctica and every bit as icy. No one dares get too close in case they injure themselves on all that ice.’

      ‘And then they’d sink like the Titanic.‘

      ‘Are you saying I look like the Titanic?’

      ‘No!’ Katie decided it was safer not to indulge in conversation. ‘You look gorgeous and the dress fits perfectly.’

      ‘Not for much longer. When I’m stressed I just want to eat. And acting alongside Nathaniel Wolfe stresses me. You’re young and pretty. Why aren’t you backstage wearing a push-up bra and a plunge top like all the other girls?’

      ‘I look ridiculous in a push-up bra and I’d die on the spot if Nathaniel Wolfe actually noticed me. Fortunately he doesn’t know I exist. He calls me “wardrobe.” Even when I was fitting him for his costume he didn’t talk to me. He was on the phone the whole time. Breathe in…’ Katie struggled with the zip, praying that it would hold. She didn’t want to be the one to point out that eating a truckload of doughnuts between costume fitting and opening night wasn’t helpful. ‘Nathaniel Wolfe is so famous I find it impossible to act normally around him. When he walks into the room my stomach churns, my mouth falls open and I stare like an idiot, which is not a good look. And anyway, he is the ultimate bad boy and I prefer men who are a little less scary.’ She fastened the hooks at the neckline. ‘There. You’re ready. Good luck.’

      ‘It’s bad luck to wish an actress good luck. You’re supposed to say “break a leg” or something similar.’

      Katie sighed. Break a zip? ‘I’m in charge of wardrobe, if anyone breaks anything it will be a problem because none of the costumes will fit over a plaster cast. And now I have to go and check on John of Gaunt.’

      She escaped to the wardrobe department where her close friend and assistant, Claire, was munching a bar of chocolate and reading a celebrity magazine hidden underneath a costume. She glanced up guiltily as Katie entered the room.

      ‘Oops. You caught me peeking into other people’s lives—all for the purposes of research, of course.’ Her grin turned to a frown as she looked at Katie’s face. ‘I’m guessing you’ve just come from sorting out the Duchess of Grizzly Ghastly Gloucester. Did she fit into her dress?’

      ‘Just.’ Katie flopped into a chair. Pain stabbed behind her eyes. ‘Dressing her in deep purple is great for the character she’s playing, but dark colours are very unforgiving against exposed flesh and I have a horrible feeling that her dress is going to split. Do we have any headache pills left?’

      ‘I just swallowed the last. And talking of headaches…’ Claire passed her the magazine. ‘I don’t know if you’re going to want to see this, but there’s a huge feature on your sister in here. Is Paula Preston the Most Beautiful Woman in the World? Well, duh—no, she’s the most airbrushed woman in the world. How come you’re Field and she’s Preston? Why don’t the two of you have the same surname?’

      ‘She doesn’t want anyone to make the connection. She likes to pretend her family doesn’t exist.’ Katie stared at the picture of her sister and then thought about how much their mother was struggling. Part of her just wanted to get on the phone and yell. She wanted to remind Paula about family loyalty and priorities. But she knew there was no point. ‘When it all came out about Dad’s gambling problem, she was horrified. I was horrified, too, obviously, but Paula was just so angry with Mum for forgiving him and staying with him all those years. She blames her for the fact we had no money when we were growing up and says that if Mum loses the house now, then it’s her own fault. She doesn’t see why she should pay for what she sees as Mum’s weakness.’

      ‘Nice.’

      ‘Sometimes I can’t even believe we’re related.’ Katie chewed the corner of her fingernail and then caught sight of her sister’s perfect nails and let her hand drop into her lap. ‘It was all too grubby for her. She’s created this perfect image for herself and she doesn’t want it tarnished by Dad’s sins.’

      Claire snatched the magazine back from her and ripped out the offending article. ‘There.’ She scrunched up the pages and threw them in the bin. ‘She’s where she deserves to be. And now I’m going to watch the wicked Wolfe onstage. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Are you coming?’

      ‘No. I need to look at my drawings again and go over the script before tomorrow.’

      ‘You’ll never be able to work in Hollywood if you’re star-struck.’

      ‘I’m not star-struck.’

      ‘Yes, you are. When you took his inside leg measurement, your face was like a tomato.’

      ‘OK, maybe I’m Nathaniel Wolfe-struck.’

      ‘The guy is smoking hot, that’s for sure.’

      Katie twisted the cap off a bottle of water. ‘Yes, but he isn’t real. How well can you ever really know an actor? How do you know when they’re acting?’ She sipped her water. She knew only too well how easy it was to think you knew someone and then discover you didn’t. ‘I mean, if Nathaniel Wolfe ever said “I love you” to you, are you seriously going to believe him?’

      ‘I overheard him telling the director that love is a four-letter word and he never uses four-letter words. Do you know that the tickets for this sold out in four minutes? Four minutes. Incredible. Particularly when you think that Shakespeare is gobbledegook to lots of people. Macbeth talking to skulls—’

      ‘Hamlet.’ Katie slipped off her shoes and flexed her toes. ‘It was Hamlet.’

      ‘Whatever. I was rubbish at English at school. I used to think Chaucer was something you rested your teacup on.’

      ‘That’s saucer, not Chaucer.’

      ‘My point exactly. Anyway, what I’m saying is that he could be reading his tax return and it would still be a full house. This is Nathaniel Wolfe we’re talking about. The man has won every award