Nell: Supporting Roles

Taz had three versions of the same monologue, and I disliked all of them for different reasons.

In the first, the character was pretending she didn't care that her brother had left. In the second, she was pretending she didn't care so loudly that I felt the brother might hear her from whatever distant country he'd escaped to. In the third, she said almost nothing and spent a long time folding a jumper.

“The jumper one,” I said.

“It's not called the jumper one.”

“I understand the official title is longer.”

We were in the rehearsal room at the arts centre. Taz was auditioning for a regional youth theatre company, which I had known in theory and failed to understand in practice until she sent me a message that said: I have asked you twice and would enjoy a third answer.

I had immediately replied with six apologies, a promise to bring biscuits and a paragraph about project deadlines.

She had replied: Thursday. Four. Yourself will do.

Now she stood under a fluorescent light in trainers with paint on them, holding the script in one hand. The jumper lay across a chair. I had thought the audition was a hobby opportunity, like joining a choir or briefly becoming the sort of person who ran. Watching her do the scene, I realised she wanted it with her whole body.

“What about the ending?” she asked.

“The line's a bit obvious. You could say—”

“I can't rewrite the play, Nell.”

“No, I know. I meant the way you say it.”

“You were about to give me a different line.”

She wasn't angry yet. That was somehow worse. She sounded like somebody recognising weather she had prepared for.

“I just think it would work better if—”

“Can you stop making it yours for a minute?”

The room went quiet. Through the wall, somebody was practising the same four piano notes, getting three of them right with increasing conviction.

I put down my notebook.

“I thought you wanted help.”

“I do. I asked you to tell me whether you believed I was talking to my brother. Not to improve the writing.”

“Oh.”

“Sometimes I don't need your best sentence.”

I looked at the notes I'd made. There were arrows, alternatives, a suggested cut. Not once had I written what she'd asked.

“Do it again,” I said.

She studied me. “Really?”

“Really. I will sit here with my unhelpful mouth closed.”

“You can open it afterwards.”

“Generous.”

She took the jumper from the chair. This time I watched her hands. She smoothed one sleeve, found a loose thread and wound it round her finger. When she said the final line, she was still looking at the thread.

I believed in the brother. Not as a backstory fact, but as an irritating person who had left his washing and an unfinished packet of cereal behind and expected her to understand.

“That one,” I said.

“Why?”

I told her. No new lines. No cleverer ending.

Her shoulders loosened.

Afterwards, we bought chips and sat on the sea wall. Taz had to be home by seven because her little cousins were coming over and she had promised to help them construct a puppet theatre. She said the production company was extremely demanding and paid in sticky hugs.

“What happens if you get in?” I asked.

“Rehearsals most Saturdays. A residential week. Then the production.”

“And you'll do it?”

“I've checked the travel and the bursary. Yes.”

She said it without qualification. I envied that. My own ambitions were usually introduced with a joke, giving me the option to pretend they had never been serious if somebody laughed in the wrong way.

“The Beacon's taking applications for a school-holiday placement,” I said.

“Apply.”

“You don't know the details.”

“Do the details include you liking journalism?”

“Broadly.”

“Then apply.”

The Marden Beacon was not a glamorous newspaper. Its website had once run a photograph of a pothole so close up that it looked like evidence of life on another planet. But Rosa Bell, the editor, wrote sharp local reports. She asked questions at council meetings that made people reach for water. I wanted to learn how she did it without sounding either apologetic or pleased with herself.

I had opened the application nine times.

Taz stole a chip. “Are you afraid they won't pick you, or afraid you'll have to turn up and not already be good at it?”

“I miss when you were just doing a monologue.”

“Me too. Much better script.”

I told her about Mum interrupting us at the museum.

Taz lowered the chip she had been about to eat.

“Us who?”

“Who do you think?”

“I'm enjoying making you say it.”

“Kit.”

“Lovely. Continue.”

I gave an account designed to make the entire incident sound ambiguous enough to survive cross-examination. Taz listened without helping me.

“Do you like her?” she asked when I finished.

“Yes.”

The word came out so plainly that we both paused.

“Oh,” I said.

“There she is.”

“I don't know whether it's a good idea.”

“Those are two different questions.”

“What if I ruin it again?”

Taz rolled the top of the paper bag down. “Then try not to do the thing that ruined it before.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“I didn't say it was simple. I said you have some information.”

A gull landed three feet away and began performing hunger at us. It looked well funded.

“We're having a picnic tomorrow,” I said.

“A work picnic?”

“Apparently.”

“Wear a work jumper.”

I threw a clean piece of paper at her. It travelled about six inches and fell between us. The gull inspected it, judged my effort and left.

At home, I submitted the placement application before I could open it a tenth time. In the box about relevant experience, I described the school paper and the town guide. I wrote co-writing the guide with photographer and designer Kit Malik. Then I read the sentence again, not because it was difficult to get right, but because it should have been easy.

My phone buzzed.

Kit: Is there anything you don't eat?

I typed: Humble pie, but people keep serving it.

Then I deleted it and answered the actual question.