Chapter 50: A Green Light (Part 2)
As the final credits rolled on the screen a few minutes earlier, Gavin had finally snaked his hand back from around her back, circling his left shoulder up and down like it had stiffened over the course of the film. When they stood and she gathered her bag, Cully wrapped her scarf around her neck again, happier than ever that she'd removed it. That wouldn't have lasted long.
The hallway to the cinema lobby burned in Cully's eyes as the dim lights of the auditorium melted away, and she squinted against the twinge of pain, the darkly stained wooden paneling and red carpeting with its white worn paths disappearing for a few more seconds. At her side, Gavin said, "I see what you mean."
"Sorry?" she asked, his profile coming together through the fog as she opened her eyes again, one of his hands tucked into his pocket. "What about?"
"About it being ridiculous." He took her hand again with his own that was free, twining his fingers through hers.
"There's not much else to expect, Vincent Price and all."
"But pushing your wife and her lover into a vat of acid?" He shook his head with a frown as they wound their way into the front lobby, melding together with another crowd, from the other auditorium, she assumed. "Doesn't make any sense, trying to hide a double murder like that."
"After everything you've seen?"
"I still haven't seen anyone shoved into acid by a skeleton on a string."
It was perhaps one of the most ridiculous scenes in the movie: Loren, wearing his marionette contraption, reeling in his bludgeon of a skeleton, sneering at the lovers dissolving as he watched. "I didn't think you had. That's why I told you."
"Now I really understand," Gavin said, releasing her hand and letting her through the doorway to the street before him even as they shuffled through the other cinema patrons. "And he made how many movies?"
"Hard to say." Cully tucked her hands into her elbows, pulling her cardigan closer to her torso as they started down the sidewalk. The sky had disappeared behind a thick blanket of cloud, just a sliver of the moon peeking through; the eaves of the cinema ended as new shopfronts began, streetlamps glowing on the pavement. She glanced up as a speck of rain dropped against her nose. "He's a legendary actor."
"There's no accounting for taste, is there?" He held out his hand, like he had felt the same.
A new drop slapped her forehead, then another. And another, another, another. "It was a different time." The swollen, heavy drops soaked through her cardigan as a dulled flash of lightning burst behind the clouds.
Gavin looked up immediately, another streak of lightning gleaming above them, this one slicing through the cover overhead. "Are you actually having a laugh?" A peal of thunder silenced him, echoing through the brick buildings. Above them, the sky opened, rain first pattering then drumming and roaring against the pavement, splashing up against their ankles and shoes, quickly soaking their socks and the bottoms of their trousers. He pulled her forward along the sidewalk, drawing them both under the eaves of another shop—some charity shop from the window—and out of the sudden downpour.
"Right movie for this evening," he muttered, shaking his suit coat. Some of the rain dripped from the hem, but it hung heavily, already sodden.
Cully's own jumper stuck against her skin, clinging in wrinkles as the water dripped down her back. She peeled her scarf away from her neck; it was already leaden and she shivered as more water trickled beneath her shirt. "Or at least right for the first day of October."
"Are you cold?"
Her palm was still warm with the heat from his, like it had seeped into her blood, ready to spread through her veins. Cully shook her head. "No, I'm fine." As he looked at her, he laughed. "What is it?" she asked, struggling not to laugh as well in spite of herself.
He touched her forehead, pushing her soggy hair back from her eyes, the locks drenched and plastered to her face. "Just..." Gavin's hand lingered, threading the same limp strands behind her ear, dragging his finger it along her jaw. "You've seen better days."
Cully swallowed around a new lump in her chest. I've had better weeks, Gavin. Even after confiding in her parents—even without deciding for herself—the guilt sank within her, knowing she had said nothing. He remembered, Cully knew that: how many times she accepted an audition—accepted a role—vanished for weeks or months—returned—pretended they had been nothing—until they crashed together anew. "You..." But you don't know for yourself. What would you tell him? "You don't look so good yourself." His shorter hair lay flat against his head, violet shirt almost black with the rain, pulled further from his throat as his opened collar drank up the rain. Even with the last drops dripping from the end of his nose...She stepped closer. Standing in the chill and damp, as he slipped his fingers around the back of her neck...Any nearer...
No. "I...I think dinner is off for tonight, Gavin," she said, dropping her face.
"Of course." The warmth against the curve of her neck vanished, his hand falling back to his side. "I'll take you home."
"Yes..."
They stood still on the sidewalk for a couple minutes, waiting for a break in the rain, Gavin muttering a few choice words about the weather to himself. She hardly heard them, but none of them sounded pleasant. "Let me come back and collect you," he finally said, reaching into his pocket for his keys. "This isn't slowing."
Cully tightened her arms around her body as she nodded. "Uh—thank you." Perhaps she was colder than she had realized.
"I'll just be a few minutes."
As he disappeared farther down the sidewalk—vanishing into the wall of rain—Cully released the breath she had begun holding. "What are you doing?" she asked herself, grinding her fingers against her eyes, praying a headache wouldn't throb at the bridge of her nose in a few minutes.
Don't you know by now? How don't you?
"It's not that—"
Then what is it? Are you afraid of hurting him again, no matter what he says?
"That's not—"
Or is it the opposite?
"No—"
Isn't it? You've found a reason to run away.
"Stuff it."
Headlights cut through the rain, not stopping as her shoes snapped against the pavement as she walked away from...well, no one but her own conscience. There wasn't any other solution for tonight, was there, both of them soaked to the bone, in drenched clothes...Of course there was, she knew: seeking solace in him, his body and his warmth, sharing herself with him until the chill was banished from them both. The desire had burned a few minutes ago, and at the evening's start as he finally clasped her hand, her heart pounding. Was she afraid? She'd accused him of the same months and months ago—fear of her father's disdain. But asking her to come out this evening—something rather much more than meeting for a cup of tea—and for once not shying away from her presence and her touch...But, was she? Why? She turned, pacing back to the spot where he had left her—where he expected her to be waiting…
And that was the long and the short of it, Cully knew, what worried her. It wasn't just the danger, though she knew both Gavin and her father had been on the receiving end of bumps and bruises, scratches and scrapes. It was the waiting and the absences—the broken engagements and promises—the unavoidable farewells and phone calls that came in the middle of the day or night. It had been the tempo of her childhood: all the missed holidays and birthdays and school events, watching her mother sigh when he disappeared into the night, or worry when he had yet to return home before she was sent to bed with a murmured warning about not oversleeping for school the next morning. Clear as day, it could be a trying life, but…"What do you want?" Cully asked herself quietly, hardly hearing the words in her head over the pummeling rain. Forever? She didn't know, couldn't know. But now? She shivered, holding her arms closer.
When had it all gone so...complicated? Three months earlier, visiting her parents after her latest production, she had called out to an old acquaintance in the street, just wanting to say "Hello, how are you?", catch up on lost time. That was all she had intended, all she was prepared for. But seeing flashes of the Gavin Troy she had met years before—not the detective sergeant who both wanted and feared being something more...Cully hadn't been able to look away, couldn't walk away, from what stood before her or the memories trembling with their fates, never allowing her to forget how things fell apart before—a dream rotting into a nightmare before she woke to the cold dawn—but tantalizing her, whispering to her…my dear...
...you can begin again, if you want...didn't you hope, and dream, and desire, even when you felt so alone in it all*…
...you can open yourself once more, let yourself be swept away, drown in the chances and possibilities…
...or you can forget it all...and run...and let the end begin here...and now**...
Cully shook her head, peering through the thick curtain into the street again. No headlights broke through the streaks of rain yet, and she took a step back, closer to the brick wall. Why are you worrying about this now? she asked herself, moving away from a new stream of water leaking from behind the overhang. The evening may have reached a different end than she—and she hoped Gavin—wanted, but hadn't it been pleasant? Stretching out her fingers, she looked down at them, still remembering her hand folded into his as his wariness disappeared. "Why can't it always be like that, Gavin?" Because if it could...it didn't answer the question, but it did simplify it.
After another minute or so and a couple of other drenched pedestrians passing on the sidewalk, one tucked beneath an umbrella, another pair of headlights at last broke through the darkness, slowing just after the turn, pulling out of the center of the lane in front of her. Bending down slightly, she could just make out Gavin's face through the fogged passenger window. Seizing the handle, she clamored in through the veil of rain, glad of finally being someplace dry, even if she was still soaked to the bone.
"Sorry—" he began as she pulled the door closed, fastening her seat belt. "I mean, I didn't mean to take so long."
"Don't worry about it."
"Could hardly see to get back on the road." As pressed the accelerator, the wheels spun in the puddles already spreading over the pavement, the car skidding for a second before at last going forward.
With the car's defogger at full tilt, pumping in cooler air against the ever retreating lacy white mist, the rain was clammy. Worst was her back and bum, both flat against the passenger seat, the drops of rain trapped and growing warm on her skin. "Mum will probably be worried."
He shrugged. "I'd have thought she'd be happier having you home early on a Friday night."
"Instead of out with you, driving in the rain?"
"Well, maybe."
Cully shook her head, cringing as damp hair brushed her cheeks, slimy like the seaweed that tangled around your feet if you swam a little too far from shore on a seaside holiday. "No, Gavin—about us both catching our death of cold."
"Must be nice," he said, tapping the indicator for a left turn without a glance through the almost cleared window. One of the back tires squealed.
"What do you mean?"
He turned the windshield wipers to a higher setting, and the snapping against the water and edge of the windscreen grew faster and louder. "Having someone like that, checking up on you as a matter of course."
"Doesn't your mother?"
Gavin laughed quietly as he braked, though it was hollow. "The last time she rang me was a couple months ago, to remind me about our annual family 'holiday'." The car skidded as it came to a stop at a red light, looming up and above in the darkness; Cully was glad of the seat belt across her chest even as it cut into her collarbone against the sudden stillness.
"Then why don't you?" she asked. "Ring her up, I mean."
He pressed his fingers to the back of his neck, just the one hand left on the steering wheel. "Easier said than done, Cully." With the shift to the green light, the car jerked forward again through the deepening puddles in the street. "As soon as she hears a thing, she starts digging her claws in. I hardly got a word in, even then."
Gavin rarely spoke of his family; when he did, it was typically his irritation with his cousin and the man's arrogance. His mother or father...she never remembered that, stranger yet when she spoke of her own so freely. "I—I'm sad to hear that," Cully finally said softly.
"She's always been that way." Gavin tapped the indicator again ahead of a right turn, slowing as a vehicle approached from the other direction, just a pair of headlights shining through the rainy night. "Can't really blame her, can I?"
"What do you mean?
"Nothing."
That's not true, Gavin, Cully thought, clenching her hand around her damp bag. While he could at times keep his opinions to himself, more often than not his words sped ahead of this thoughts. Earlier tonight, just sitting through the introductions of the characters in the film, he hadn't waited a minute to form his opinions. "Busy body." "Oxford toff." But, was it fair, wondering what led him to prickle while holding her own questions and possibilities to herself?
"Do you have anything planned, for the rest of the weekend?" he asked.
The streets curved one way, then another, nary a straight length to be seen. Residential, probably just a few blocks from home, she realized, hardly the ending to the night that its beginning had promised: dinner, company...and whatever else might have been. "Driving for the library tomorrow, nothing much else."
"If the backroads aren't flooded?"
"Something like that." The car slowed even further, turning sharply, the headlights still hardly able to shatter the curtain of rain. Why was it so difficult, saying something so simple? When she still wasn't certain herself? And now, the headlights vanished and the roar of the engine fell mute. Home—and out of time. "I have to tell you something, Gavin."
"What?" The dome light flared, Gavin's left arm falling from the car's roof back across her shoulders, just like it had less than two hours ago: new and strange, feeling him so close to her where eyes could pry and tongues could ask questions he would not want to answer. Could it continue—would it?
"Remember what I told you, a few days ago?" The abrupt darkness may have fled, but shadows still crept from the edges of the car's interior, more than willing to swallow the light. "The Playhouse, I mean."
His arm stiffened against her upper back, the muscles taut through his jacket and shirt. "Not waiting for the committee to make a decision?"
"Yes. I just thought I should tell you..." No, it wasn't guilt, or not really; she'd forged ahead often enough in her life, on and away, leaving behind friends and lovers for so many different reasons. It was sadness—regret—loneliness—staying her words, the possibilities of tomorrow and weeks and months after, the dozens of chances and futures. Perhaps any or all of them were destined to vanish like a fog melting in the dawn. Would Cambridge bring finality? Would it tarnish or destroy the brightness of that uncertainty?
"What, London again?"
She shook her head. Some things never change. "That's not what I was—I mean, it doesn't matter."
Gavin grabbed her hand, squeezing her palm. "I wasn't—"
"Then what?"
"I just don't want to worry about that—right now."
"Then what do you want to worry—"
"You."
"I—"
Her words ended as he kissed her, and Cully tasted the breath from his open lips, wanting to drink it—drink him in, never forget that or the smell of his skin on hers, the burning of his hand in hers, in her wet hair. She freed her mouth for a gasp of air, then surrendered again, his tongue twisted together with hers. Choice? There was no choice—his fingertips tracing her jaw, her neck, the wrinkled and soaked collar of her blouse, the swell of her collarbone, chasing away the chill and stoking the flames anew. Yes, if she wasn't careful, Cully knew—knew!—she would run up the white flag, succumb...
He turned his face from hers, a soft groan deep in his throat. "I—" His thumb grazed the curve of her neck as he closed his eyes for a moment. "I should—"
"I should go." That was all it could be. "No—Gavin." The rain still thumped on the car, as loud in her ears as her own slowing pulse. "Stay—just a few more minutes." The hot flush on her cheeks was fading, her skin still sticky. I shouldn't go, either...Should I?
Outside, the sudden deluge still hammered against the windows of the Barnabys' front room, rapping and then snarling in turn. Thirty or so minutes earlier it had howled out of nowhere, the lightning and thunder galloping behind on its heels. It could have been the middle of the day, he mused, and the sheets of rain still would have blotted out the sun as it drowned out the sounds of the street. Inside, it faded into a dull roar in the back of his mind as he sat reading opposite Joyce.
"Well, you think he'd find some better tropes to work from," Barnaby said, closing his book. The Da Vinci Code, recommended several times over the year by Joyce.
She lifted her face from her own book she was reading: not Notes From a Small Island, but something similar. Small Island, maybe that was it. "What?"
He waved the floppy pages under its red and gold cover. "Long lost brother who wasn't killed in a car accident, secret messages written in blood."
"The bestseller isn't good enough for you, then?" she asked, raising an eyebrow as she closed her own book over one of her fingers to hold her place.
"It's not about being good or not, Joyce. A constable barely able to tie his shoes would laugh at it!"
She shrugged. "People around the world seem happy to read it."
He leaned back in the cushioned chair, his elbows pressed into the armrests as he dropped the book onto one of his legs. "As they can be."
"Then why worry about it, Tom?"
"It's just not very inventive," Barnaby said, shaking his head as a fork of lightning shone through the window out toward the drive. "Why use something worthy of Agatha Christie?"
"You mean he should have come to Midsomer—on a dark and stormy night?"
His laugh was short, even though he smiled at his wife. "Your words, not mine, Joyce."
"Well, as tetchy as you get when you don't have a murder to solve..."
"You make it sound as if I like it."
"You do enjoy untangling a puzzle."
Barnaby ran his thumb over the edge of the pages, the rustling vanishing into the sound of the storm outside. "All the reason to make it more complicated."
Joyce turned her own gaze back to her novel. "Then you'd complain it was unrealistic."
"No, I would not—" Metal rattled, like a key scraping against the tumblers of the front door lock. Barnaby turned his wrist over, checking his watch: half nine. As the hinges squeaked, the pounding of the rain roared with a gentler clap of thunder, mixed with footsteps and the jangling of the door knocker.
"...a moment, Gavin."
"It's fine."
His eyes rose for a moment: his daughter and his sergeant clustered just inside of the door. As the door closed, he turned his book over to the back cover. "Wasn't expecting you back so—" Wait. Both looked like they had just gone for a swim in their clothes, dark and drenched, clinging to their arms and legs. Cully's hair lay slicked against one of her cheeks, almost light brown with the rain, and Troy's coat hung wrinkled from his shoulders. Pair of drowned rats.
Joyce dropped her novel, rising to her feet. "What on earth happened to you two?"
"I—forgot my umbrella, that's all," Cully said, stamping her feet.
"Not the right day for it, was it?" Even with her face down and mussed by the rain, Barnaby saw the slightest flush blossom on her cheeks.
"Apparently not, Dad."
"We were only just outside the cinema, sir," Troy said, scratching at his throat, "right when it started to rain."
Joyce—who a moment ago had disappeared into the kitchen—returned, a pair of their larger tea towels in her hands. "Here," she said, handing one to Cully and one to Troy, "at least dry your hair and faces before you catch your death of cold."
Scrubbing at his hair for a moment, Troy muttered, "Uh, thanks."
"I told you." He barely heard Cully speak as she slipped her bag onto the floor.
"The car park isn't that far." Even if they were halfway between the cinema and Troy's car—Barnaby shuddered, thinking about his daughter in that passenger seat with all the sharp turns it endured—it didn't make sense. And he hoped at least one of them had the sense to stay put when the rain pounded against the ground and pavement sharply as hail.
"We went to the Jupiter*** instead, Dad," she said, mopping the back of her neck.
"Oh?" Joyce asked, perched on the edge of the chair where she had been peacefully sitting a few minutes earlier.
Cully began drying her hair, rubbing it between the two ends of the small towel. "That Peter Sellers film opened there tonight."
"And how was it?"
"Sold out." As she moved to a new section of hair, the partially dry strands hung tangled and frizzy. "But they're starting mystery reruns and the like, for October."
Barnaby choked back a laugh. "How did that measure up to real life, Troy?"
"A little silly, sir."
He glanced down at the fat novel he'd finally finished this evening, returning to it after a few days of neglect. "That's generally the best route, I've been told." He didn't need to look at his wife to know she was smiling.
"Or I might have thought so until yesterday."
"I still can't believe all of that was just hiding there." Joyce turned back to him. "In a secret room, like something out of Sherlock Holmes." Barnaby had to smile as well, just a bit; perhaps he was lucky she hadn't gone for Agatha Christie.
"Do you think the papers will believe it enough to report it?" Cully asked, patting the towel over her face and just under her chin.
"I guess we won't know until they decide what to report," he answered quietly, pretending not to notice how close Cully still stood to Troy. His eyes bounced from one to the other and back again. Barnaby was no fool, one of the many reasons he didn't suffer them in silence. Only a fool could watch his daughter and his sergeant—together or apart—and see nothing. The painful silences, the stumbling words, the inexplicable flushes (almost always painted on Troy's face rather than hers)...all more and more frequent, like whatever lay beneath was only growing stronger in bursts and fitful starts. "Like a lot of others," he added quietly.
No one spoke for a few seconds: Troy folded the towel Joyce had given him, the corners not quite meeting properly and Barnaby thought he saw Cully slide even closer to him, shivering slightly in her damp jumper. And one of Troy's hands, reaching for hers?...
"I put the kettle on, just then," Joyce said suddenly. "Cully, Gavin: cup of tea?"
Whatever he had seen—it stopped, a private world broken by a few outside words. "Ah, no, sorry Mrs. B." His sergeant shook his head, stepping away from the door, giving Joyce back the now rather limp towel. "I should really be going. But thanks all the same."
When had Troy last been here: for the same thing, wasn't it, bringing Cully home. Late morning rather than late evening, to a house already quivering beneath the shadow of death and loss. As the final minutes of the morning ticked over into the first of the afternoon, he had sat beside Cully, silent as Joyce began to worry aloud: when he, Tom, would leave to perform the identification, notifications, funeral arrangements, all the unfortunate duties that followed as the next of kin. As that day had neared one and Barnaby finally steeled himself to step outside, to go and confront death anew, Troy stood with him, offering to take him to Bullard's realm. And then, over the next weeks, on his own, the younger man continually took on extra tasks around the squad room, generating far beyond his share of reports, leaving Barnaby only the responsibility of reviewing them before submission, offering fewer corrections than usual. Perhaps Joyce was right. He did know very little about Gavin Troy, the man; almost everything he knew reflected on DS Troy.
It had cost Troy much of the time that had previously been his own, hours Barnaby knew he had increasingly spent with Cully. He knew it had troubled his daughter, even if she said nothing; it bled into her voice and words, perhaps even lingering in the darkness in her eyes earlier this week. But all that gone now, replaced by...what?
Cully had handed her own soaked tea towel to her mother, now less bedraggled, though her hair was still a fair brown shade—reaching for the front door knob, ready…"Sorry, Cully?" Barnaby called, rising to his feet as his book fell to the chair seat. She looked back as he took a few paces across the front room to the small patch of tile where she stood. "Troy, before you go, can I have a word?"
"Dad—"
"Just a couple details about Devington School."
"Of course, sir." He stood still, until Barnaby raised his palm toward the door. "Oh," Troy muttered.
Cully stepped away. "I'll call you."
"Sure. See you."
Troy turned the knob, opening the front room to the darkness and breeze of the evening. Though grey clouds still rolled over the black sky broken by the moon and stars, the rain had tapered to a drizzle, just spitting a few drops here and there. Barnaby pulled the front door closed behind himself, following Troy down the front steps a few paces down the path toward the drive, still in the pool of light cast by the lamp at the side of the door. His sergeant's car was parked askew, no surprise. "What about Devington school, sir?"
"Nothing, Troy," he said, shaking his head, "all your reports looked in order. I did, however, want to have a word about couple different things."
Troy thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, as he often did. "Ah—"
"In a minute." No prizes for guessing what Troy supposed. "First, I don't believe I've said...thank you."
"I'm sorry, sir?"
Barnaby ran his palm over his face. This sort of conversation with Troy...it was almost a first. The only others he recalled were at Midsomer Malham just hours before Cully's latest premiere; and after Troy drove at breakneck speed through Aspern Tallow to a dead man's house, searching for Cully and...Well, there was no use bringing that up. "A few weeks ago, right after—my aunt's death. Shouldering more of the responsibility, it was...very good of you."
"Of course," he said quietly. "I'm sure it was a hard time for—all of you."
"Quite so."
Troy dropped his face for a moment. "And, uh, anything else—"
"Yes, there still is. Can we go a little farther?" he asked, nodding his head at the drive. While their shoes clicked against the rough pavement as they moved toward the shadows, Barnaby grasped for the words he needed. The picture is still incomplete, he thought, words from the final victim of their just solved case echoing. The clues and hints were there, some hidden in silence, and others...Sometimes, it was easier not to know.
"Earlier today," Barnaby continued as Troy turned back around, "what I believe you meant to say was that you've missed spending time with my daughter."
"Well—"
"A simple yes or no will do, Troy." The pink flush spreading over his sergeant's face was answer enough, but he wanted to hear the words. Far easier to talk yourself out of a nod or shake of the head, or a long meandering answer.
"Yes, sir. I've enjoyed—getting to know her again."
Barnaby crossed his arms, crushing his tie beneath them. Once before, he'd interviewed Troy and Cully after discovering a body; Barnaby had still never asked exactly what happened at that rope course by the river, but his stomach now churned just as it did then. "Whatever I think of her better judgment, I believe..." Something stopped him, but he couldn't put his finger on what. "No matter what she said or didn't say..."
"She's out. She's got a new boyfriend. Actually, I think he's a policeman, too." Somehow, whenever he thought he had a grasp on this friendship—relationship—how to think and feel—his wife's words and her smile came flooding back, muddling his thoughts.
"I'm sorry, but what—"
"I want..." Do you trust her? Barnaby asked himself. As she had grown out of adolescence, he had learned to both trust her choices and keep his thoughts to himself. She'd shown him he had no choice. But do you trust him? "Thank you for taking some time for her tonight—and considering the hour."
"Wasn't much choice after getting soaked in by the rain."
"Quite." Barnaby took a step back, even as he squinted at Troy in the darkness. He didn't have an answer to his second question. "I'll see you on Monday. 9 am. Don't be late again."
As Troy tugged his keys from his pocket, he frowned. "Sir?"
"9 am sharp."
"Yes, sir," he said quietly.
As Troy opened the driver's door without another comment, Barnaby slowly made his way back to the front door, mounting each stair with a quiet step. The engine roared to life as he turned round again. Months and months earlier, in another moment like this, their words had grown angry.
"We already went over this: it's a difficult life, Troy. I know you understand that."
"I think Cully does."
"It's not the same!"
"Maybe not, sir—"
"She has a choice now, and she didn't before."
"I know that—"
"So try to remember it, like I told you before."
"Fools rush in," Barnaby muttered, Troy's car backing out of the drive, a little too close to the edge before jerking the other direction before the sharp turn onto the empty street. But then—those were the next questions, weren't they? Who is the fool? Where is he going? For the first time since the beginning of summer—no, since he'd tasked Troy as his errand boy to deliver Cully those theater tickets—neither answer was certain. And that first query...was it the right question at all?
* See "Once Upon A Dream", Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical.
** See "Chapter 0", Siren's Lament. These two references are what inspired me in these ideas, not what Cully is thinking about.
*** Modeled on a small cinema close to where I used to live, both physically and in choice of films.
A/N: Cully's part of this chapter was inspired by a scene in the Webtoon Before We Knew It/Jdrama Bungaku Shoujo. I researched British cinemas, but I know I missed some things; most of the information I found was for larger venues about a decade after this time frame, so I had to do some extrapolation from my experiences in the US and the way the Playhouse is portrayed. Apologies, but I swear I tried! Troy's opinion of his parents is a combination of his mother's brief mention in the show, my memories of them from the books, and creative liberties.