Chapter Text
The applause always came a second too late.
Kris had noticed that somewhere around the third week of the run. There was a strange pocket of silence between the final line and the audience remembering what they were supposed to do with themselves. A second, perhaps two, where the theatre remained completely still.
She had grown to love it.
Tonight, the silence stretched.
Kris stood centre stage beneath a single pool of light, chest rising and falling harder than it should have been. Her character's final words still seemed to hang somewhere above her, suspended amongst the dust and heat of the old theatre.
Her hands trembled.
Not Kris's hands.
Hers.
That distinction mattered.
For two hours she had belonged to somebody else. Worn her anger. Borrowed her grief. Carried herself differently beneath the weight of a life that existed only between seven-thirty and ten, six nights a week.
Then the lights went black.
And the theatre erupted.
Applause crashed against the stage.
Kris exhaled.
There she was.
Back inside herself.
She blinked into the darkness as the company assembled for bows, bodies finding their places through muscle memory. Someone caught her hand. Someone else squeezed her shoulder. All of them caught in that strange second between being someone else and becoming themselves again, each touch grounding them, bringing them back down to the reality of me.
The lights rose again.
Kris smiled.
She bowed.
And, despite herself, looked toward Row G.
The woman was still there.
She had noticed her during the second act.
Not because she had been disruptive. Quite the opposite.
She hadn't moved.
Everyone moved eventually. Shifted in uncomfortable seats. Scratched an itch. Reached for water. Whispered something they believed the actors couldn't hear. It was rare to be able to see much beyond the first few rows, but there was something about her. Something that drew Kris's sight back again and again.
This woman had simply watched.
Intently.
Blonde hair brushed her shoulders, catching silver beneath the low theatre lights. Her clothes were dark, elegant without being showy. Even seated, there was something precise about her posture.
And her eyes.
Blue.
Kris had caught them twice from the stage.
The first time she had dismissed it.
The second had annoyed her.
Now, as the audience rose around her, the woman remained still for half a beat longer before finally standing. It appeared almost begrudging, as though to stand would be to admit something.
Their eyes met again.
Kris looked away first.
Stop it.
She smiled toward the balcony instead.
The company bowed again.
More applause.
Someone beside her leaned closer, barely moving their lips as they whispered, "They're fucking loud tonight."
Kris bit down on a laugh, though the smirk at the edge of her mouth couldn't quite be caught.
The curtain fell.
Immediately, the spell broke.
Actors scattered in every direction. Someone swore about a missed cue. Someone else started peeling tape from their chest before they'd even reached the wings. The stage manager appeared with the expression of a woman who had personally prevented civilisation from collapsing for another evening.
Kris barely made it offstage before arms wrapped around her.
"You were disgusting."
Kris laughed into the shoulder pressed against her face. "Thank you."
The actor holding her pulled back enough to look at her properly, expression grave despite the grin threatening underneath it.
"No, genuinely. Horrible. I hated you."
"Again, thank you."
"You made the woman behind me cry."
"That's literally the job."
The arms released her.
Kris pushed her glasses back onto her nose, the world snapping into focus.
She hated performing without them.
Contacts made her eyes dry beneath stage lights, and glasses didn't exactly fit the period costume, so every evening she spent two hours navigating the world through vague shapes and memorised distances.
Perhaps that explained Row G.
Without her glasses, the woman had been little more than blonde hair and two pale points of attention.
Now Kris could finally see properly.
Not that she was thinking about her.
She wasn't.
"Drink?" someone called from further down the corridor.
"In a minute," Kris called back, already heading towards her dressing room.
"You said that yesterday," came the immediate retort.
"And eventually I appeared."
"Forty-five minutes later."
Kris glanced over her shoulder with an apologetic smile. "I need to change."
Her usual excuse.
It wasn't entirely a lie.
She needed time alone after performances like this. Time to decompress from such a heavy character. To peel back the layers of makeup, sweat and costume until there was nothing left of the woman she'd been pretending to be.
Going straight for drinks always felt awkward when she was still wearing someone else's face.
The dressing room was already chaos.
Flowers crowded the counter. Makeup wipes sat amongst open scripts and half-empty glasses of water. Someone's bra had inexplicably appeared over the back of Kris's chair, despite Kris being reasonably certain it wasn't hers.
She stared at it.
"Lucy?"
"Not mine," Lucy answered from somewhere behind a rack of costumes.
"Amelia?"
"Mine!"
Kris turned toward the voice. "Why?"
"Long story."
Kris picked it up between two fingers and threw it across the room.
The past year had been strange.
There wasn't a better word for it.
Strange.
A year ago, she'd been auditioning for anything that would pay enough to cover rent. Fringe theatre. Commercials. A truly appalling independent film in which she'd played a woman credited only as Concerned Neighbour.
Then came Tender Things.
Tiny budget.
Twenty-three day shoot.
A director nobody had heard of.
Kris had nearly turned it down. But something told her she shouldn’t. The script had spoke to her. A quiet promise and a sense of solidity she hadn’t felt throughout her years of auditioning. She knew this could be something.
Then Cannes happened.
Freaking. Cannes.
Even now the word felt ridiculous.
They had won. This tiny budget indie film had one the Palme d’or.
Suddenly there were photographs of her online. Interviews. Meetings. Scripts arriving through an agent who had previously needed reminding that she existed. Articles after articles with statements from friends and family who ‘always knew shed be big’. What a joke.
People had started using words like breakthrough.
Discovery.
One to watch.
Kris hated that one most.
As though she'd recently crawled from beneath a rock and needed monitoring. A science experiment destined to fail the moment enough people began looking closely.
She scrubbed the stage makeup from beneath one eye.
"There's someone waiting for you," Lucy announced coyly from behind her.
Kris glanced at her through the mirror.
"Who?"
"Don't know."
"Helpful."
Lucy leaned against the counter, enjoying herself now. "Blonde. Terrifying. Asked for you specifically."
Kris stopped.
Row G.
Blue eyes.
"Journalist?"
"Don't think so."
"Agent?"
“No." Too quick in her reply there.
"Then why is she waiting for me?"
Lucy shrugged. "Maybe she's in love with you.” Teasingly.
She punctuated the suggestion by flicking a previously discarded piece of clothing at Kris's shoulder.
"Excellent. Exactly what I need."
"You could try being grateful."
"I am grateful."
"You look horrified."
Kris met Lucy's gaze in the mirror.
"That's my grateful face."
Lucy laughed and disappeared again.
Kris stared at herself.
Twenty-eight years old.
Half her makeup removed.
Hair damp at the temples.
An angry red mark across the bridge of her nose where her glasses had spent the entire day sitting.
Hardly irresistible.
Not that she remotely believed a stranger was waiting outside because she'd fallen instantly in love with her. Kris wasn't that delusional.
She pulled a jumper over her head and immediately caught her glasses in the collar.
"Fuck."
By the time she escaped, she was tired.
Not normal tired.
Performance tired.
The strange, hollowed-out exhaustion that came from spending several hours manufacturing emotions for strangers and then being expected to make conversation afterwards.
There were people gathered in the corridor.
Friends of cast members. Family members who watched every performance, good or bad. Producers. Someone Kris recognised from television but couldn't name. A man with expensive shoes was telling another actor that he'd found the production "visceral", which Kris had learned was theatre language for I need you to know I understood it.
She kept her head down.
"Kris."
She stopped.
Martin Hale.
Producer.
Of course.
"Kris, darling."
She suppressed the instinctive recoil at darling.
"Martin."
"Wonderful tonight."
His voice carried the exaggerated warmth of someone who had congratulated several people already and intended to congratulate several more.
"Thank you."
"No, really. Extraordinary."
He reached out and touched her elbow.
Kris looked down at his hand.
Then back up at him.
Martin removed it.
"Thank you," she repeated, this time flatter.
"I've been telling everyone, this is precisely why Cannes happened. There's something very raw about you."
Kris smiled politely.
There were approximately seventeen responses she could give to that.
None were advisable.
Not if she wanted to continue working in the industry.
Martin continued.
"Although you must be careful."
There it was.
Kris knew there would be an although.
Her smile tightened. "Careful?"
"Momentum." Martin lowered his voice as though imparting some great industry secret. "People get excited. Young actor. Beautiful. One successful film. Suddenly everyone wants a piece."
"I'm twenty-eight."
"Exactly."
Kris stared at him.
Martin smiled as though he'd said something profound.
"You've got extraordinary instincts. Don't ruin them by thinking too much."
That one landed.
Perhaps because she'd heard versions of it before.
Too analytical.
Too political.
Too serious.
Too much.
Kris folded her arms.
"I quite like thinking."
Martin laughed.
Actually laughed.
Like she'd made a joke.
"I'm sure you do."
Something hot crawled beneath Kris's skin.
Across the corridor, someone was watching.
She felt it before she looked.
The woman from Row G.
Up close, she was older than Kris had initially thought.
Fifties, perhaps.
Beautiful.
Objectively.
Kris could acknowledge that without attaching any particular significance to it.
There were fine lines around those startling blue eyes and another beside her mouth. Her blonde hair fell loosely against the collar of a black coat. No elaborate jewellery. No desperate attempt at youth.
She was watching Martin.
Not Kris.
And something in her expression suggested she wasn't particularly impressed.
Good.
At least they agreed on something.
Martin finally left after another two minutes of advice Kris hadn't requested.
Kris watched him disappear, jaw still tight, before exhaling through her nose.
"Christ."
"You handled that badly."
The voice came from her right.
Low. Calm. Certain.
Kris turned.
The blonde woman.
Of course.
Her shoulders tensed immediately at the unsolicited commentary. Wow. Ok. So maybe they didn’t agree on that.
"Excuse me?"
The woman stepped closer.
Her voice was lower than Kris expected. English, but softened around the edges by something Kris couldn't immediately place. There was no nervousness to it. No hesitation. She spoke as though she expected people to listen.
"I said you handled that badly."
Kris stared at her.
Perhaps Lucy had been right about the terrifying part.
There was something imposing about the woman being in someone else's space, as though whatever patch of floor she occupied simply became hers for the duration. She wasn't particularly tall, yet somehow managed to seem so.
"Do I know you?"
One eyebrow lifted.
Something flashed across the woman's face.
Amusement?
Offence?
Kris couldn't tell.
"No."
"Then that's a strange way to introduce yourself.” Already not in the mood for this interaction.
"I wasn't introducing myself."
The reply came smoothly. Almost lazily.
Kris blinked.
"Even stranger."
The woman's mouth tightened.
Kris should have stopped.
She knew that.
She was exhausted. Martin had irritated her. This stranger had watched her for two hours and apparently decided that entitled her to provide notes on Kris's ability to navigate patronising men.
She should have smiled. Thanked her.
Walked away.
Been sensible.
Unfortunately, Kris had never been particularly gifted at sensible when angry.
The woman glanced toward where Martin had disappeared.
"He was trying to compliment you."
"Was he?"
The tiredness bit through Kris's words. She didn't need this right now. She needed that drink, already regretting having allowed herself to be left alone.
"In his way," the woman replied thoughtfully, as though she knew his way personally.
"His way was condescending."
"Most people in this industry are condescending."
"That doesn't make it acceptable."
"No." The woman's gaze returned to Kris. "It makes it predictable. Something you need to become accustomed to if you want to stay in this industry."
Kris blinked.
"And therefore I should what? Smile? Say thank you? You're right, I should stop thinking?"
"I didn't say that."
The woman's voice remained maddeningly even.
"You said I handled it badly."
"You did."
There was no cruelty in her voice.
That somehow made it worse.
Kris laughed once, without humour.
"Right."
She turned away, dismissing her supposed admirer in the process, and faced the mirror again. Picking up another makeup wipe, Kris began removing what remained around her eyes.
It gave her something to do.
Something she could control.
Slowly, she felt command returning to her hands. Her body.
The woman didn't leave.
Instead she studied Kris through the mirror.
Those eyes again.
The same unbroken attention Kris had felt from the stage.
"You're very certain," she said eventually.
Kris met her gaze in the reflection. "About?"
"Everything, apparently."
The woman's tone was cool now.
"How to act. People's intentions. Everything..."
She allowed the sentence to hang between them.
Kris felt something inside her sharpen.
"That's an interesting conclusion to draw from a conversation you've been listening to for five minutes."
"Less than five," the stranger corrected, one corner of her mouth shifting.
Was she trying to enrage her?
"Even better."
Kris rolled her eyes.
The woman sighed.
Perhaps she was trying to end it.
Kris didn't let her.
"I assume you're in the industry."
"I've been around it."
Vague.
Deliberately so.
Kris turned properly toward her again.
"Then perhaps you're used to women being expected to nod politely while men explain their own careers to them."
That landed.
The woman's expression changed.
Only slightly.
But Kris saw it.
"I assure you," she said, quieter now, "I am familiar with that."
"Then I'm surprised you think I should be better at accepting it."
"I didn't say you should accept it."
"No. Just that I handled it badly."
The woman's jaw moved slightly.
"You did."
Kris stared at her.
"How?"
"You let him know he'd bothered you."
"And?"
"And men like that enjoy knowing they've bothered you."
There was something different in her voice now.
Not smugness.
Experience.
Kris opened her mouth.
Stopped.
Because irritatingly, there was something in that.
The woman saw the hesitation.
Her expression softened almost imperceptibly.
"You're young."
There it was.
Kris's jaw tightened instantly. The softness evaporating as quickly as it had begun to take place.
"Please don't."
The woman's brow furrowed. "Don't what?"
"Do that."
"Do what?"
"Tell me I'm young as though that makes whatever comes next more profound."
"I wasn't."
"Maybe you don't realise you're doing it."
The sharpness had returned to Kris's tone, helplessly now. She was tired of the assumptions that because she was new to this part of the industry she was somehow young enough to need protecting.
She wasn't a child.
The woman's expression cooled.
"I think I'm perfectly capable of knowing what I'm doing."
"And I'm perfectly capable of handling myself."
"I didn't suggest otherwise."
"You literally opened with telling me I handled myself badly."
Kris's voice rose slightly on the final word.
Not enough to draw attention.
Enough that they both noticed.
For the first time, the woman looked genuinely irritated.
"You're determined to misunderstand me."
The composure in her voice had begun to fracture. Only at the edges, but Kris heard it.
Kris laughed.
"And you're determined to explain me."
Silence.
That one hit harder.
The woman's posture changed.
Tiny.
But unmistakable.
Her shoulders became more rigid. Her chin lifted.
Kris immediately knew she'd gone too far.
She should apologise.
Instead the woman said, very quietly:
"You have no idea who I am."
Something about the sentence infuriated Kris all over again.
Maybe it was the assumption behind it.
The expectation that she should know.
Should care.
Should be impressed.
"No," Kris said. "I don't."
Her own voice had gone quieter too.
The woman's eyes hardened.
"Clearly."
There was something almost wounded beneath it.
Kris didn't understand why.
Not yet.
"Perhaps," the woman continued, each word carefully controlled now, "when you've been doing this slightly longer than five minutes, you'll discover not everyone offering advice is trying to diminish you."
Kris's stomach dropped.
There it was.
Exactly what she'd expected.
She smiled tightly.
"And perhaps when you've been doing it as long as you apparently have, you forget what it's like when everyone assumes experience automatically makes them right."
The woman went still.
Fuck.
Definitely a step too far.
Off the proverbial cliff.
But neither retreated.
They stood opposite each other in the narrow backstage corridor, surrounded by flowers and laughter and people celebrating something Kris suddenly couldn't remember enjoying.
The sounds around them seemed strangely distant now.
Someone laughed in a dressing room.
A bottle opened somewhere further down the corridor.
Neither woman moved.
Finally, the stranger nodded.
Once.
Cold.
Controlled.
"Good performance."
Kris blinked.
The change was so abrupt she almost thought she'd misheard.
"What?"
"Your performance."
The woman's expression gave nothing away now. Whatever irritation had slipped through moments before had been sealed away again.
"It was extraordinary."
Her voice had softened.
And somehow that was worse.
Because she sounded sincere.
Not patronising.
Not indulgent.
Sincere.
Before Kris could respond, the woman turned and walked away.
Kris watched her disappear down the corridor.
Blonde hair.
Black coat.
Straight back.
Not once looking behind her.
"Well."
Kris closed her eyes.
Lucy had appeared beside her.
"How much of that did you hear?"
"Enough."
"Fantastic."
Lucy stared after the retreating woman, then slowly turned back towards Kris.
"Do you know who that was?"
Kris opened her eyes.
"No."
Lucy stared at her.
Then toward the corridor.
Then back at Kris.
"Oh, fuck."
Kris frowned. "What?"
Lucy looked almost delighted.
Which was never reassuring.
"Kris."
"What?"
"That was Billy Presley."
Silence.
The name landed somewhere between Kris's ribs.
Billy Presley.
The Billy Presley.
The face from posters.
The woman from The Hollow House. From Dead September. From the films Kris had watched through her fingers when she was far too young to be watching them in the first place.
The final girl.
The actress who had disappeared from Hollywood almost as completely as she'd once dominated it.
Kris looked toward the empty corridor.
"Oh."
Lucy folded her arms.
"Very eloquent."
Kris replayed the conversation.
When you've been doing this as long as you apparently have.
Jesus fucking Christ.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I said blonde and terrifying."
"That's not a name."
"I thought you'd recognise Billy fucking Presley."
"I didn't have my glasses on when she was in the audience!"
"You had them on just now."
"I was angry!"
Lucy stared at her.
Kris rubbed both hands over her face.
Somewhere beneath the embarrassment, however, irritation stubbornly remained.
Billy Presley or not, she'd still been condescending.
Hadn't she?
Yes.
Probably.
Mostly.
Kris looked down the corridor again.
Empty.
"Well," she muttered.
"Well?"
"I suppose I won't have to see her again."
Lucy made a sympathetic noise.
Kris frowned.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Lucy."
"I'm sure you're right."
Her tone suggested she didn't believe that for a second.
Kris narrowed her eyes.
Lucy smiled.
And somewhere across London, entirely unknown to Kris, Billy Presley sat in the back of a black car with Kris's name glowing from the screen of her phone.
She stared at the photograph accompanying an article about Cannes.
Same glasses.
Same stubborn mouth.
Same infuriating woman.
Billy locked the screen.
Then unlocked it again.
"Kris," she murmured.
The name felt familiar now.
Her voice carried none of the clipped irritation she'd used backstage. Spoken here, alone in the darkened car, it sounded almost thoughtful.
Her driver glanced into the mirror.
"Sorry?"
Billy's eyes flicked up.
"Nothing."
The word came sharply enough to end the conversation before it began.
She looked back out at London sliding past the window.
She had gone to the theatre expecting nothing.
A favour.
An evening out.
Another performance she'd clap politely for before going home and forgetting most of it by morning.
Instead she'd found the first actor in years who had made her forget she was watching someone perform.
Kris had been extraordinary.
Uncomfortable to watch at times.
Raw without being careless. Controlled without allowing the control to show.
Billy had spent most of the second act trying to work out how she was doing it.
Then she'd met her.
Billy leaned her head back against the seat, eyes briefly closing.
Arrogant.
Defensive.
Far too certain of herself.
And irritatingly, not entirely wrong.
Billy opened her eyes again.
"Insufferable."
The driver wisely said nothing.