Dying to be Famous by Tanya Landman Read Free Book Online Page A

else to think about. Exactly how rocky were the finances of the Purple Parrot Theatre Company? Was it really in danger of collapse? And how far would Peregrine be prepared to go to save it?
    We couldn’t start rehearsing without Tiffany and she was in a state of shock. But just when it looked like Peregrine would have to give up on the idea of working that day and send us home, our leading lady stepped on to the stage. “I’m not going to let it get to me,” she said.
    “Bravo!” cried Cynthia. “That’s the spirit.”
    “Besides,” Tiffany carried on, “we don’t know for sure the chocolates were poisoned. Until we do, I refuse to worry about it.” There she stood – brave, defiant and vulnerable. You couldn’t help admiring her. And the men couldn’t help wanting to protect her. Even Graham looked a bit misty eyed. She was the perfect plucky heroine.
    So why did I feel uneasy?
    I thought about it all morning while we rehearsed our flying monkey scene. It was my favourite bit of the whole show, even though the costumes Cynthia helped Jason clamp us into (singing “Come Fly with Me” under her breath) were a bit hot and itchy. I mean, synthetic fur’s never going to be comfortable, unless you’re a stuffed toy. But climbing up onto a tower in the wings and then swooping off in a great arc across the stage was brilliant. Graham thought it was fun too and the other kids were positively green with envy. When we landed we had to scare off Dorothy’s dog, Toto, who obliged by yapping very loudly, and then grab her and fly back. Tiffany was wearing a harness too so, despite Graham’s gloomy predictions about us getting irreversible muscle strain, it was really easy.
    As Jason disconnected us from our harnesses I sneaked a look at Tiffany’s profile. I couldn’t put it into words: it was too vague. But there was definitely something odd about her. It was to do with what I’d noticed when she was giving the TV interview – the way that you couldn’t quite see the gap between when she was being normal and when she was acting. I found it a bit disturbing but when I mentioned it to Graham later he just shrugged and said, “First you thought Hannah was behaving strangely and now it’s Tiffany? Maybe they’re both stressed. It’s a scientifically proven fact that people react with unpredictable emotions when they’re under pressure.”
    Yet Tiffany didn’t seem unpredictable when she was on stage – if anything she was just the opposite. When Cynthia (humming “You’re the Cream in my Coffee”) brought Tiffany her cappuccino, she sighed admiringly.
    “Your voice is wonderful,” Cynthia said, handing her the cup. “I’m terribly jealous. You never change, you never stumble, you never falter. You’re so
consistent
. How on earth do you do it?”
    Hannah was close by and her eyes narrowed shrewdly as she waited for Tiffany to respond.
    For a second Tiffany looked outraged, almost as if Cynthia had insulted her. But then she did one of those gleaming smiles, which hit Cynthia like a thunderbolt.
    “Hard work,” Tiffany said. “That’s all it is. I’m a professional. I never stop practising.”
    If Tiffany
was
under terrible pressure like Graham thought then it was certainly greater by the end of the day, when the results came back from the lab. All the soft-centred chocolates – the ones she’d said were her favourites – had been injected with a lethal dose of poison. If Graham had eaten the strawberry one he wouldn’t be with us any more, he’d be in hospital. Or the mortuary: dead on a slab in a fridge right next to Geoff. And I’d be there with both of them. It made me feel quite dizzy but Graham seemed a lot less bothered about it than I was.
    “The reality is that we avoid death several times a day,” he said with one of his blink-and-you-miss-it grins as we left the theatre. “Every time you cross the road you risk fatal injury. There’s no point fretting about what might have