Page 64 of A Snowfall of Silver

At the first opportunity I slip unobtrusively out into the cool night air, drinking it in, feeling the cold snap against my heated cheeks. I head back to the boarding house, where I climb the stairs, quick and silent, then I knock on one of the doors.

A low voice answers. “Who is it?”

“It’s Freya,” I say. “Please, I have to speak to you.”

There’s a pause, a shuffling sound, and finally the lock clicks and the door swings open.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“You’d better come in,” Viola says.

She is wearing a white nightgown and, shivering, she gets straight back into bed, pulling the blankets right up around her like a cocoon. Her hair is matted and her eyes have dark circles underneath them. Perhaps she really is ill.

“Are you … feeling any better?” I ask hesitantly.

Viola tilts her head as though considering this. “A little,” she says finally.

“That’s good.”

There’s an awkward silence. I hover in the doorway, unsure of what to do or say.

“So you went on, did you?” she asks, and she gestures to the foot of the bed, where I perch myself gratefully.

“Yes.” I hesitate, and then I look at her, really look at her. Straight in the eyes. “I wasn’t very good.”

Viola doesn’t correct me. She doesn’t rush to convince me otherwise. She simply nods, accepting the fact. “No,” she says. “I don’t suppose you were.” The words sound like they should be cruel, but somehow they aren’t. She’s just being honest.

“You are the only person I can talk to about this.” I twist my hands in my lap. “I know you’ll understand. I need you to tell me the truth. Do you think I could be an actress?”

Viola doesn’t answer. She reaches to her bedside table for a packet of cigarettes, tapping one loose and lighting it. I’ve never seen her smoke before.

She takes a drag and then slowly exhales. “If you’re asking me if I think with work and training you could make a living as an actress on the stage, then the answer is possibly yes. But I don’t think that’s what you are asking me.”

“What am I asking you?”

She looks at me steadily. “You’re asking me if you can be great. And the answer to that is no.”

I absorb this small hard truth into my body like a blow. “Perhaps I don’t need to be great,” I say weakly.

“Don’t do that,” Viola says sharply, pointing at me with her cigarette. “Don’t turn away from your own ambition. You and I are the same in some ways and that’s one of them. There’s no point in doing it if you’re not going to be the best. There’s no sense in aiming for anything less than perfection. You could do a fine job. You could be…”

“Competent,” I say, giving voice to an earlier thought.

“Competent, yes.” She nods. “But you’d be miserable.”

I am miserable now, I think. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” I say. My voice is small and sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away. There is a static buzzing in my ears, and a physical ache in my chest.

“I know,” she says without sympathy. “But that’s true for lots of girls. Not all of them can make it.”

“But you can?”

She taps her cigarette into an empty water glass. Something flickers across her face. “Yes. I can. I will.”

I believe her too. She has the talent, the determination and the strength to become a star, a household name.

“I knew it the second I was onstage,” I say finally. “It wasn’t like how it used to be, when it was just me and I could fall into it, lose myself in it. It hasn’t been like that, even in rehearsals. I was trying so hard, too hard. I was trying to be you, thinking about what you would do. It just felt … wrong. Up there, on the stage. It’s not where I belong.”

I think if I had tried to explain this to anyone else, even Kit, that they would misunderstand. They would tell me it was just one performance, that I would improve with time and work. They wouldn’t understand the instinctive feeling of wrongness, the undeniable message my brain and my body were sending me, the one that I heard loud and clear. Viola does. I am grateful for her honesty, even if it costs me dearly. I know she understands, and though we are not exactly friends, in that moment I feel incredibly close to her.