“What, exactly?”
But she was looking just past me, her eyes gone suddenly hard. “I’m invested in it not happening again,” she was saying in a hollow voice. “The business with the orchids, that is.”
The party had grown louder; someone had put on the Rolling Stones, and a few people were dancing. A girl in the corner was reading my uncle’s copy of Middlemarch. Across the room, Leander and his suitor were peering out the windows at the night, their shoulders barely touching.
None of it mattered. Something was stirring in my blood. “Begin at the beginning,” I told Dr. Larkin. “And tell me, please, that you don’t want me to play Ophelia.”
Two
“THEY WANT YOU TO PLAY OPHELIA?” WATSON ASKED, hoisting his duffel bag over his shoulder. His suitcase was already on the curb. “Isn’t that a little, like, on the nose?”
I thumped the roof of the cab, and it trundled back out into the road. Six on a Sunday, and the city was quiet, the sun still not entirely up. Flights from America always came in with the dawn. For once, Watson didn’t look the worse for wear. He never fared well on planes across the Atlantic, sleeping fitfully or not at all, but this morning his hair was so extravagantly tousled, I knew he’d spent the whole flight unconscious. Though the red lines near his temples (striated; elastic?) flummoxed me until—
“You had on a sleeping mask,” I said, delighted beyond all sense. “Tell me, was it one of those with the eyelashes printed on it? Was it silk? Was it your mother’s, or—”
He pulled it from his pocket and tossed it to me; I caught it one-handed. Black silk, sans eyelashes. “You’re a jerk,” he said, laughing. “I bought it in the terminal.”
“Why would I be a jerk? I’m only asking about your beauty sleep.”
“Did it work? Am I more beautiful now?”
His white shirt was rumpled—why on earth had he worn an oxford on an international flight?—and he still had his medicinal-blue flight pillow around his neck, and everything he was thinking, every last thing, played out on his face: anticipation, happiness, a little fear. Knowing what he did about the way I worked, what I observed, he still wore it there for me to see.
Of course he was beautiful.
“Of course you aren’t,” I told him, but I was smiling. “It’d take a longer nap than that, surely.”
Upstairs, we settled in on the sofa, his feet propped up on his duffel. The soles of his trainers would leave a mark there, but at least they weren’t on the couch. Leander would have had kittens. “So. Ophelia,” Watson said. “Isn’t there another part for you to play?”
“Not for my purposes.”
“I guess it isn’t much of a stretch for you.” He knew he was annoying me, and he was enjoying it. I could tell from his left eyebrow.
“I’m not sure if you’re aware of this,” I said, “but I have no plans to drown myself because of you. I don’t see how my playing Ophelia is ‘on the nose.’”
He tipped his head against the cushion. “You are the smallest bit tortured, you know.”
I grimaced. “Less so, now. Therapy. Lots of therapy. And I’m eating breakfast. I’m a healthy, sound person.”
“I’m sure that Ophelia ate breakfast.”
“Pedant,” I said, and pulled my legs up to my chest. “I’m just not particularly interested in playing a character whose most striking characteristic is her virginity.”
Watson reddened, which was fascinating, and so I studied him until he began to squirm. Finally he said, “But you’d be doing it so you can solve a mystery, and also you’ve always wanted to be an actress. I mean, like, you are an actress. A good one. You have a literal wig box under your bed.”
It was now in pride of place on my dresser, but that was beside the point. “It will be an interesting exercise,” I allowed. “And anyway, I’m not playing Ophelia straight out, I’m understudying. Less time onstage, more time backstage. I need that freedom of movement.”
“At least it isn’t Macbeth,” Watson said, hugging a pillow to his chest.
“I thought we did Macbeth last year, you and I.”
“What, starring Lucien Moriarty? In the Scottish access tunnels? Sherringscotland? What does that make you . . . MacHolmes?”
“And you Lady MacHolmes?” I snorted. “I think those are the technical terms, yes.”
“So what about me?” Watson asked. He was struggling to stay awake; his eyes were half-closed. “How do I help with all of this?”
“Well, I’ll be quite busy. I’ll need someone to do my poetry homework,” I said, and he roused himself enough to poke me with his shoe. “No, there are a few different options to get you in. You could assist with the production. Set painting, lighting, et cetera. You could write a piece on the precollege Dramatics Society. Make up some American college newspaper to do it for. Or you could audition, but I doubt you’d want to, or—”
“I could be a good Hamlet,” Watson murmured, and with that he fell asleep altogether.
I watched him for ten minutes or so before I went to go organize my lockpicks.
Later, closer to noon, Leander knocked on my door. He went for a luxurious lie-in some weekend mornings, and today wasn’t an exception. “Breakfast?” he asked, popping his head in.
“Breakfast,” I confirmed.
There were hash browns and sausages on the stove, and I perched in my usual seat at the counter, twisting back and forth on my stool. It was childish to do it, but we had nothing this whimsical in my house growing up. A seat with a mechanism!
In an attempt to stop “paying my whole bank balance to Starbucks,” as he put it, Leander had invested in an espresso maker, and this morning, he was making the two of us cappuccinos. Despite its racket and the smell of the fry-up on the stove, Watson stayed asleep on the sofa, his arms around one of the paisley cushions.
“It’s going to be a bit different for you two,” Leander said, following my line of sight.
“Different how, exactly?” I stopped turning about on my stool. I wasn’t willing to have a conversation about my love life with Watson sleeping five feet away.
No matter how much breakfast I was bribed with.
He tipped the tomato he’d sliced into the skillet. “Oh, come,” he said. “You’re both of age. You’re both finished with school. You’re free to run around setting things on fire as much as you’d like.”
“We were more or less doing that before.” I padded over to pick up my cappuccino.
“And now, my little arsonist, you have three months to figure out your next move,” Leander said, stirring the baked beans. With his other hand he peeled bacon out of the package. I made to help him, but he brandished his spoon.
“I’m defending this little fiefdom,” he said. “Sit. Have your cappuccino.”
“University,” I said, obediently taking a sip. “Oxford. That’s what’s next. That’s been settled. I sat A levels. I forged papers so I could sit A levels without having taken the classes. I did an interview with a tutor and solved maths problems on a whiteboard for an audience.”