Read Online The Art of Standing Still by Penny Culliford - Free Book Online

desk, and read it aloud once more, just to establish it in her mind. Everyone had their own technique for learning words. When she was at university, the students had discussed how best to memorise a script. She had favoured recording it on tape, then playing it as she went to sleep, hoping the lines would embed themselves subliminally in her brain.
    She had thought hard about what to perform for her audition piece. She again considered her options as she flicked through her drama folder from university. The Bible was too obvious. Besides she didn’t understand it. She contemplated Elizabeth Proctor’s speech from The Crucible – too controlled, Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire – too hackneyed. And Abigail’s Party , well! Then she thought of Shakespeare, one of Viola’s speeches from her favourite play – Twelfth Night – and ran though the words in her mind.
    â€˜I left no ring with her; what means this lady? Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her! She made good view of me; indeed, so much . . .’
    As fervently as Jemma tried not to engage with the mystery plays and tried not think about her firmly twisted arm . . . still, she was the sort of person to give it her all. If she had to be part of this play, she had to do it well. Mohan didn’t seem to have countenanced the possibility that she wouldn’t be cast in the role of Mary Magdalene, and, to be honest, neither had she.
    She had always got the lead role, right from her nursery school. She wasn’t going to be a stand-around angel. No, for Jemma, nothing less than the Virgin Mary would do. Her ambition extended far beyond her career. She was competitive, that was just her nature. Sports, careers, relationships. Perhaps that was why she hit the ground so hard and jumped to her feet again so quickly when Richard
left. At this moment, she agreed with Olivia, and fully intended to avoid love ‘like the plague’. The pun made her smile.
    A screech of brakes brought her bolt upright. Then footsteps, running along the towpath. She shot to the window. It was too dark to see. A car door slammed. She threw open the hatch and a pair of headlamps blinded her as a car shot towards her, mounting the strip of grass and threatening to cross the towpath. Instinctively, she put her hands up. The engine screamed as the car reversed. The gears crunched and the car sped across the car park. Her view was obscured by trees. She heard the tyres crunching over the gravel of the car park, then take off up the lane. She stood fixed to the spot, hardly daring to breathe. All was quiet again outside.
    Something strange was afoot, she was sure of it. Still she couldn’t go to the police. She had no description of the car or the people in it and no evidence of a crime. Perhaps she would tell Mohan. Perhaps he would think it worth investigating, or perhaps he would laugh and dismiss it as paranoia.
    â€˜I wish Richard was here.’
    Instantly, she slapped that thought in the face. Whatever happened, Richard was the last person she needed. She lay on her bed again, this time, cocooned in the quilt.
    She listened for the car to return, but all she heard was the screech of a barn owl and the water lapping gently, lapping, lapping . . .

Scene Six
    JEMMA EVENTUALLY FOUND A PARKING SPACE HALFWAY UP THE HIGH STREET. Slowly she unclenched her hands from the steering wheel and exhaled. First, an accident on the bypass delayed her for nearly an hour; then the traffic had been almost at a standstill at Monksford General Hospital.
    It had been nothing but traffic jams since the ‘highway improvements’ last August. The new road, which led through the revamped industrial estate – now Monksford Business and Retail Park – was supposed to have been the panacea to all the town’s problems. But rather, it had caused even more ills. It cut an ugly wound through the Kentish farmland and took passing trade away from