I had to remind myself that Sky was very young, no more than twenty-five. Strolling into rehearsals in her leggings and boas, knee-high boots, gloves with the fingers cut off and every day a different piece of antique jewellery that she might have inherited from a wealthy aunt, she seemed to be modelling herself on Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Maybe that was how she saw herself, skating along the surface of life, admired by all. Hawthorne was looking at her dubiously. He wasn’t impressed.
Her rose-gold telephone rang and without a glance in our direction, she picked it up and answered it.
‘Yeah … Yeah … No, I can’t talk to you right now. I’m about to go on and I’ve got someone with me. No …’
But although she didn’t talk, she listened, holding the phone with her little finger pointing in the air.
I took in the rest of the dressing room while I waited for her, wondering what Hawthorne would make of it all. Somehow, I didn’t think he would find it too difficult to work out Sky Palmer’s background, her family history and everything she’d done in the last ten years, given the multiple clues scattered around.
There was barely a surface that wasn’t crowded out. She had been sent so many flowers she could have opened a shop – or perhaps a funeral parlour – including a huge bunch of roses that had been shoved into a single vase and were struggling to survive. Most of her good luck cards were expensive: handmade rather than mass-market. I’d already noticed Sky’s Gucci umbrella and Cartier watch. The luxury brand names continued with crystal flasks of perfume, hand cream in porcelain tubs, Fortnum & Mason biscuits and loose-leaf tea in fancy tins, liqueur chocolates, soap and scent diffusers, those weird stick things that poke out of a jar of oil, dispensing, to my mind, no scent at all. Three bottles of champagne and a bottle of gin had been lined up on one shelf and there were a dozen glasses that didn’t appear to have been washed.
None of this connected with what I knew of her. She had spent three years appearing as a barmaid in EastEnders, and during rehearsals she’d always spoken with an Estuary English accent, although dismissing us just now, she had been much more Cheltenham Ladies’ College. I thought I’d had a good understanding of everyone I’d met so far – Tirian, Jordan, Arthur and Olivia Throsby. But Sky was something else. A mystery within a mystery.
‘This is a fifteen-minute call for members of the Mindgame company. You have fifteen minutes to curtain up. Thank you.’
It was a disembodied voice that I presumed belonged to Pranav, the stage manager. It came over the intercom system and for the first time I noticed the speaker set high up in a corner of the room. Sky heard it. ‘I’ve gotta go! Bye!’ She disconnected the telephone and set it down, then turned to us. ‘I’m really sorry. I have to get ready.’
‘Come on, darling. I’ve seen the play. You’re not on for the first fifteen pages.’ When Hawthorne was annoyed, he often slipped into language that I would not have used myself. Perhaps he did it deliberately, to show he didn’t care. ‘We need to ask you a few questions about Harriet Throsby,’ he added.
‘I told you. I’ve got nothing to say. I hardly knew her.’
‘Did you know where she lived?’
‘Why are you even asking me that? Are you accusing me of something? Yes, I knew where she lived. We all did.’ She looked directly at me. ‘You showed me that article in the magazine.’
‘What?’
Once again, I felt the ground opening up beneath my feet. How many more ways could I be found guilty of this crime?
‘House & Garden. You showed it to me during the first week of rehearsals. There was a picture of her house. The article said she lived next to the canal … near a tunnel.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about!’ I exclaimed. ‘I never saw the magazine. I didn’t know her address …’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’
I turned to Hawthorne for help. He glanced at me and shook his head a little sadly – but his attention was still fixed on Sky. ‘No one’s calling you anything,’ he said. He waited until she had calmed down. ‘Tell me what happened in the green room, when you all got together after the first performance.’
‘You mean … the party?’
‘I’m talking about the review.’
That shook her. ‘Yes. I wish I hadn’t mentioned it now. But Tirian snatched my phone before I could stop him and he showed it to everyone. I had no idea it was going to be so cruel,’ she added, defensively.