I Am Dust Read online

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. The Game

  2. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  3. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  4. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  5. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  6. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  7. The Game

  8. Chloe’s Room

  9. The Game

  10. Chloe’s Room

  11. The Game

  12. The Game

  13. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  14. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  15. The Game

  16. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  17. Chloe’s Room

  18. The Game

  19. The Game

  20. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  21. The Game

  22. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  23. The Game

  24. Chloe’s Room

  25. The Game

  26. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  27. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  28. Jess’s Bedroom

  29. The Game

  30. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  31. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  32. Chloe’s Bedroom

  33. The Game

  34. The Game

  35. Chloe’s Bedroom

  36. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  37. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  38. The Game

  39. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  40. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  41. The Game

  42. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  43. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  44. Chloe’s Bedroom

  45. The Game

  46. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  47. The Game

  48. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  49. The Game

  50.The Dean Wilson Theatre

  51. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  52. The Game

  53. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  54. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  55. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  56. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  57. There and Yet Not There

  58. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  59. There and Yet Not There

  60. The Dean Wilson Theatre

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Louise Beech is a prize-winning author, whose debut novel How To Be Brave was a Guardian Readers’ Choice for 2015. The follow-up, The Mountain in My Shoe was shortlisted for Not the Booker Prize. Both of her previous books Maria in the Moon and The Lion Tamer Who Lost were widely reviewed, critically acclaimed and number-one bestsellers on Kindle. The Lion Tamer Who Lost was shortlisted for the RNA Most Popular Romantic Novel Award and the Polari Prize in 2019.

  Her most recent novel, Call Me Star Girl, won Best magazine Book of the Year. Her short fiction has won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose, and the Aesthetica Creative Works competition, as well as shortlisting for the Bridport Prize twice. Louise lives with her husband on the outskirts of Hull, and loves her job as a Front of House Usher at Hull Truck Theatre, where her first play was performed in 2012.

  Follow Louise on Twitter @LouiseWriter and visit her website: louisebeech.co.uk.

  Also by Louise Beech

  How To Be Brave

  The Mountain in My Shoe

  Maria in the Moon

  The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  Call Me Star Girl

  I Am Dust

  Louise Beech

  This is dedicated to the people who pick up the glitter.

  And to a girl who was glitter: Allia Jen Yousef, or simply Jen.

  I’ll now have to wait until after the dust settles

  to finally meet you.

  I’m still here; I am dust.

  I’m those fragments in the air,

  the gold light dancing there,

  that breeze from nowhere.

  Dust – the Musical

  Close my wounds,

  keep me together;

  give me strength

  now and forever.

  It stops.

  The blood dries;

  the panic stills;

  the calm washes over me.

  Saves me from my end.

  Katy Beech

  1

  The Game

  2005

  YOU THREE

  NEVER BE

  UNDER ONE ROOF

  This was one of the last messages before the three teenagers went their separate ways; one of the last messages of the game. Sitting cross-legged in a circle, Jess, Ryan and Chloe wore Macbeth costumes; Jess’s red velvet dress was damp beneath her arms; Ryan wore his crown, as if he was saying that he was the leader tonight; Chloe wore her long witch robes, but she had flung the itchy wig into the backstage cupboard.

  Their final show of the season had finished hours earlier, to rapturous applause. Now it was time to play the game one last time. When they began over a month ago, Ryan had called it a ‘game’, and he had told them the rules. But along the way they had bent them to fit their needs. ‘We’ll shut it down if it gets weird,’ they had agreed. ‘We’re in control,’ they had said.

  Chloe knows now that they all lied.

  Not only to one another – by saying they would end it if necessary – but to themselves. Over that summer, morbid curiosity, youthful bravado and teenage love had joined them on a dusty stage in a church. Now autumn was a breath away. Now the dying August sun could barely penetrate the boarded-up windows and light the room. Ryan had left a lamp on in the nearby backstage room, and it filtered gently through.

  ‘Last time, then,’ he said, positioning the alphabet letters in a circle.

  ‘Last time,’ repeated Jess.

  ‘Last time,’ said Chloe softly.

  Ryan lit the three candles. The third one wouldn’t ignite easily; he managed on the third match. Three, three, three. It had always been three. Chloe tried not to cry. So much ending. So much change. She wasn’t ready. They put their fingers on top of the upturned glass in the centre of the circle.

  ‘Is there anyone here with us tonight?’ asked Ryan, as he had so many times.

  Nothing happened.

  Chloe smiled, wondering if the spirits liked to tease, to make their audience wait. Eventually a slow, seductive scrape drew their eyes down – the glass moved from letter to letter, spelling out messages from beyond. Chloe smiled. She knew who was moving it so deliberately.

  This was the one she most liked to talk to.

  Then the glass stilled, but only for a moment, as though ownership had switched, and the new owner had taken a breath. She saw him. Like she had that first time, so long ago it seemed now. He was sitting behind Ryan. Cross-legged. A teenage boy. Grinning. Face bloody; the crimson flow from a ragged gash across his forehead pretty in the flickering light.

  The glass continued moving. It spelled out the words:

  YOURE READY

  ‘We are,’ said Ryan.

  YOU ARE ETERNAL THREE

  ‘We are,’ said Ryan.

  READY FOR THE POWERS

  Chloe knew these words were the beginning of the end. The end of their friendship. The end of this. The end of childhood. Because they were all different now. She felt it as acutely as she had so many things this summer. Even though the spelled-out words were not spoken, Chloe heard them as though they had been. Many times, for her, the black-and-white letters somehow transformed into the voice of their creator.

  YOU THREE

  NEVER BE

  UNDER ONE ROOF

  It was only later – when Ryan and Jess had gone, and Chloe was speaking to the spirits alone – that she asked aloud why it was better they n
ever meet again. And the answer made her realise they never should.

  Then slowly, she forgot it all.

  Like a jigsaw broken up, piece by piece, the memories died. Chloe eventually forgot that summer, and Jess and Ryan and their words, and the spirits. But the love she had felt remained in her heart, as a feeling more than a physical memory – an ache, a pain that compelled her to return to the dark, secret habits again and again, until they were an addiction.

  2

  The Dean Wilson Theatre

  January 2019

  There is a moment just before a show starts when the audience is united by a sharp intake of breath. A moment after they have turned off phones and settled comfortably in seats; a moment when darkness falls, and the stage is lit; a moment when they might wonder if they even exist anymore; when they forget everything for two hours.

  In that moment, at the back of the auditorium, Chloe hopes over and over and over to experience the magic she felt when she first saw a musical with her mum; when she sang the songs to the brand-new show, Dust, here at the Dean Wilson Theatre, marvelling at the beauty of its lead actress and the passion of the story.

  Now she works here as an usher and views the spectacle of the latest show each night, alongside up to five hundred patrons. She sits quietly in the shadows, her less-comfortable spot a flip-down seat near the technicians’ box. Here Chloe can easily see if anyone turns a phone on. Here she can slip out if another usher radios to say there are latecomers needing to be let in. Here she has one eye on the stage and one on the audience, one ear on the musical numbers and the other plugged with an earpiece that punctuates her shift with announcements and instructions to hand out the right flyer at the end.

  Tonight, though, Chloe’s hope for the magic of Dust died with the first song, just as it has every night since this show opened ten days ago. Forget Everything You Know is a new musical set in a dementia hospital. It has so far received mixed reviews.

  This evening, the lead actor, George Dewitt, has a cold, which can’t be helped but means his song about childhood being more vivid than things from yesterday is raspy rather than haunting. The audience is small, their reaction muted. Chloe scans the backs of their heads, bored now in this second week of a show that the local newspaper has called ‘tasteless but full of enthusiasm and the odd laugh’.

  A voice crackles through the radio earpiece. Chloe can’t make out the words, so she whispers into the mic, ‘Can you repeat that, please?’

  Another crackle. Nonsensical static.

  Then: ‘Never … be… one … roof…’

  She frowns. What does that mean? Who said it?

  Chloe steps out into the foyer and says more loudly into the mic, ‘I didn’t hear that fully. Can you repeat?’

  Silence.

  Bloody radios. Half of them don’t work properly, but they’re essential for communication between ushers, front-of-house duty managers, technicians and stage managers. Chloe is about to return to the auditorium when Chester comes out of the box office with six large posters under his arm. He was here when the theatre opened, as he happily tells anyone new. Slightly overweight and forty, he’s a ray of light or an annoying gossip, depending on who you listen to. To Chloe, he’s a joy.

  ‘Did you radio me, Ches?’ she asks.

  ‘Me? No. Busy putting these up.’

  ‘Who was it then?’

  ‘I didn’t get a message on mine.’ He plonks the posters on a table. ‘Maybe you’re hearing things.’

  ‘No, there was definitely some—’

  ‘O.M.G,’ interrupts Chester, his face bright with gossip. ‘Have you heard?’ It’s a face Chloe knows well. He loves it when he’s the only one with a nugget of information – some clandestine relationship among the cast or some scandalous sacking – and he usually strings out the sharing of it.

  Chloe opens the theatre door to go back in, but can’t help pausing. ‘Heard what?’

  Chester grabs her arm. ‘It’s coming back,’ he hisses, eyes aglow.

  ‘What is?’ Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. For some reason the words make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

  Then duty manager, Cynthia, opens the box-office door, clearly not amused. ‘Chloe, what are you doing outside the auditorium? How many times have you all been emailed about not leaving mid-show?’

  ‘Sorry.’ She sneaks back in and finds her seat in the dark.

  The radio crackles in her ear again.

  Chloe frowns, anticipating static and more curious words, but one of the technicians announces that there are five minutes until the interval. Thank God.

  The cast start singing about incontinence. She wonders if this is a moment the local newspaper thought was tasteless, or funny. She can’t wait until the end, although she’s not looking forward to the bike ride home if it’s still minus two and raining. The song reaches a squeaky climax; the lights come up in the auditorium; there’s a spattering of feeble applause that fades into silence.

  Chloe stands by the open door. Dressed in the customary black shirt, waistcoat and trousers – dark to blend in with the shadows – she holds out programmes and smiles at the patrons as they file past and towards the bar. Sometimes she feels like she doesn’t exist. That she is as invisible out here as she is at the back of the theatre.

  No one smiles back. Snippets of conversation catch her free ear.

  ‘We should have gone to see bloody Phantom at the New Theatre.’

  ‘Shall we escape and go to that place that does three-for-two on cocktails?’

  ‘I suppose you could say it was topical.’

  Chloe is supposed to convey such comments back to Cynthia for the show report, but she’ll probably have forgotten them by the end of the shift. She has been an usher at the Dean Wilson Theatre for six years. Staff and regular patrons affectionately call it the DW: it was named after the playwright who created the very first show – Dust – which opened the then brand-new building twenty years ago. Ten-year-old Chloe had nagged and nagged her mum to take her, saying she simply must see it, that all her youth-theatre friends were going, and she had to see what all the fuss was about.

  She has never forgotten it, and still sings the songs.

  Chloe’s earpiece crackles and one of the technicians speaks. ‘Three minutes until the end of the interval.’

  Chester comes over and takes the remaining programmes and money pouch from her so he can cash up. Every night, three ushers sit inside the auditorium while one stays in the box office, dealing with latecomers, doing the timesheets, and any other job that comes up. Chloe likes to be inside the theatre, no matter how tiresome the show or how many times she has seen it.

  ‘It’s coming back,’ says Chester with a wink, and hurries away.

  Chloe shakes her head, laughing, knowing it will no doubt be gossip about something trivial. When clearance is given on the radio, she closes the doors, the lights dim, and the show continues.

  Maybe if things had happened differently, Chloe might have been up there. In the spotlight. Assuming a persona. Speaking lines learned for months. Singing her heart out. Drinking in rapturous applause. It wasn’t to be. She never believed herself quite good enough to pursue acting seriously.

  Still, she often sneaks into one of the dressing rooms when the actors have left. There, Chloe stands in the dazzling mirror lights and imagines transforming into Fantine or Roxie Hart or Esme Black. There, she whispers the never-forgotten lines from her days at the youth theatre; from her days studying drama at university. There she sings lines from the title song of the first show she ever saw:

  I’m still here; I am dust. I’m those fragments in the air, the gold light dancing there, that breeze from nowhere…

  The hardest role Chloe has to play is the everyday woman she is – a woman once described as ‘girl-next-doorsy but versatile’ on a long-forgotten CV. Every actor learns early on where they fit in. There are those who can carry the iconic roles. And there are those who are forgettable enough to blen
d into a chorus line or crowd scene.

  ‘Am I forgettable?’ she often whispers in the dressing-room mirror.

  She is scarred. Clearly. And not in some angst-ridden way. Not just emotionally. She is physically scarred. She could never play any roles that require her legs or stomach or arms to be on display. Never bare flesh. So instead she’s writing a script on her laptop, hoping to create lines for another actor to perform one day.

  Now, in the darkness at the back of the auditorium, she fingers the ridges on the skin beneath her trousers. The scars. Her history.

  The radio crackles in her ear.

  She frowns.

  More strange words in the static.

  ‘Never … be … under … one … roof…’

  ‘Who said that?’ she whispers into the mic.

  ‘Never … under … roof…’

  The words stir something black in her gut; ignite some long-buried memory.

  ‘Never … roof…’

  Chloe rushes to the door, stumbling in the shadows. Outside in the foyer, she speaks into the mic. ‘Is someone messing about on the radio?’

  After a beat, Cynthia speaks. ‘Must be yours. Nothing on mine.’

  Then Chester says, ‘Nor mine.’

  Chloe wants to rip the thing out of her ear. But there are still twenty minutes of the show left. She goes back inside, returns to her seat. Tries to lose herself in the songs. Tries to concentrate on scanning the audience for illuminated phones.

  Eventually gentle applause signals the end; a sitting ovation. Chloe hands flyers for an upcoming show about Brexit to the patrons as they quietly file out and escape into the night. The stage is lifeless without the lighting and action.

  Once the auditorium is empty, she and the other two ushers – Paige and Nina – collect the rubbish and straighten up the chairs. Some bastard has left chewing gum on a seat.