‘Except – and this is the funny thing – I did have a dream. It’s strange how things happen, isn’t it? One year, they gave me a part in the school play. It wasn’t a big part. I was Hortensio in The Taming of the Shrew. But the thing is, I loved it. I loved Shakespeare. The richness of the language, the way he created a whole world. I felt so excited standing there in costume, with the lights on me. Maybe it was just that I had discovered the joy of being someone else. I was fifteen years old when I realised that I wanted to be an actor and from that moment the thought consumed me. I wouldn’t just be an actor. I would be a famous actor. I wouldn’t be Robert Cornwallis. I’d be someone else. It was what I had been born for.
‘My parents weren’t happy when I told them I wanted to audition for RADA – but do you know what? They let me go ahead because they didn’t think I had a hope in hell of getting in. Secretly, they were laughing at me but they decided that if they let me get it out of my system I’d forget about it and slip back into the family tradition. I applied for RADA and without telling them I applied for Webber Douglas and the Central School of Drama and the Bristol Old Vic too and I’d have applied for a dozen more until I got in. But I didn’t need to. Because the fact of the matter was that I was good. I was really good. I came alive when I was acting. I breezed into RADA. I knew, the moment I auditioned, they were never going to turn me down.’
I said something. It came out as an inarticulate noise because by now the drug had gone to work on my vocal cords and it was difficult to speak. I think I was going to plead with him to let me go but it was a waste of time anyway. Cornwallis frowned, went over to the table and picked up one of the scalpels. As I stared at him, he walked over to me. I saw the light of the neon shimmering in the silver blade. Then, without hesitating, he plunged it into me.
I stared in complete amazement at the handle jutting out of my chest. The strange thing is that it didn’t hurt very much. Nor was there a lot of blood. I just couldn’t believe he’d done it.
‘I told you I didn’t want to hear from you!’ Cornwallis explained, his voice once again rising into a whine. ‘There’s nothing you can say to me that I want to hear. So shut up! Do you understand? Shut up!’
He composed himself, then continued as if nothing had happened.
‘From the first day I entered RADA, I was accepted for what I was and what I had to offer. I didn’t use the name Robert Cornwallis and I never talked about my family. I called myself Dan Roberts … no-one cared about things like that. It was going to be my stage name anyway. And I wasn’t “funeral boy” any more. I was Anthony Hopkins. I was Kenneth Branagh. I was Derek Jacobi. I was Ian Holm. All those names were up there on the boards and I was going to be one of them, just like them. Every time I went into the building I had this sense that I had found myself. I’m telling you now, those were the happiest three years of my life. They were the only happy three years of my life!
‘Damian Cowper was there too. You were right about that – and don’t get me wrong. I liked him. To begin with, I admired him. But that was because I didn’t know him. I thought he was my friend – my best friend – and I didn’t see him for the cold, ambitious, manipulative swine that he was.’
I glanced down at the scalpel, still jutting obscenely out of me. There was a pool of red spreading around it, no bigger than the palm of my hand. The wound was throbbing now. I felt sick.
‘It all came to a head in the third year. Everything was more competitive by then. We all pretended to be each other’s friends. We all pretended to support each other. But let me tell you, when it came to the showcases and the final play, that’s when the gloves came off. There wasn’t a single person in that building who wouldn’t have pushed their best friend off the fire escape if they thought it would help them get an agent. And of course, everyone was sucking up to the staff. Damian was good at that. He’d smile and he’d say the right things and all the time he had his eye on the main prize and in the end, guess what he did?’
Cornwallis paused but I was too afraid to speak. He stared at me, then snatched up a second scalpel and, even as I cried out, stabbed it into me, this time into my shoulder, leaving it there. ‘Guess what he did!’ he screamed.
‘He cheated you!’ I somehow managed to force out the words. I didn’t know what I was saying. I just had to say something.
‘He did more than that. When I was cast as Hamlet, he was furious. He thought he was entitled to the part. He’d already performed it as part of his Tree. He wanted everyone to see how good he was. But it was my turn. The part was mine. That last production was my opportunity to show the world what I could do and he and that bitch girlfriend of his tricked me. They did it together. They deliberately made me sick so that I couldn’t come to rehearsals and they had to recast.’
I didn’t understand quite what he was talking about but right then nor did I care. I was sitting there like a bull in the ring with two scalpels sticking out of me, both hurting more and more. I was certain I was going to be killed. He seemed to be waiting for me to speak. Fearful that my silence would only enrage him more, I muttered: ‘Amanda Leigh …’
‘Amanda Leigh. That’s the one. He used her to get at me but I caught up with her in the end and made her pay.’ He giggled to himself. It was the most convincing portrayal of a lunatic I’d ever seen. ‘I made her suffer and then she disappeared. Do you know where she is? I can tell you if you like – but if you want to find her, you’ll need to dig up seven graves.’
‘You killed Damian,’ I rasped. It took every effort to form the words. My heart felt as if it was going to explode.
‘Yes.’ He brought his hands together and bowed his head as if he was praying and even then I got the sense that there was something mannered about what he was doing. This was a performance for an audience of one. ‘People said I was great in the run-up to Hamlet,’ he continued. ‘I should have been Hamlet. But I couldn’t do that because I was ill, so I ended up as Laertes and I was great as Laertes too. But the problem is, Laertes only has half a dozen scenes. He spends most of the play off-stage. I had about sixty lines. That’s all. And at the end of it I didn’t get the agent I wanted and when I left RADA I didn’t get the career I wanted either. I tried. I kept myself in shape. I went to acting classes. I went to auditions. But it never clicked.
‘There was a season playing Feste in Twelfth Night at the Bristol Old Vic and I thought that was going to be the beginning of everything. But after that, nothing happened for me. I came so close! I had three call-backs for The Pirates of the Caribbean before they gave the part to someone else. There were TV shows, new plays … and I was always thinking it was going to happen for me but for some reason it never did and all the time I was getting older and the money was running out and as the months became years I had to accept that there was something broken inside me and that something had been broken by Amanda and by Damian. When you’re an actor, unemployment is like cancer. The longer you have it, the less chance there is of finding a cure. And all the time my fucking family was watching from the sidelines, waiting for me to fail, to come back into the fold. They were almost willing it to happen.
‘Well, one thing after another: my agent decides to drop me. I’m drinking too much. I wake up in a filthy room with no money in my pocket and I realise I’m not having any sort of life. And finally the penny drops. I’m not Dan Roberts any more. I’m Robert Cornwallis. I put on a dark suit and I join my cousin Irene in South Kensington – and that’s it. Game over.’