Teds Shorts - A Series of Short Stories

Between Scenes 

The clock at Waterloo loomed like a benevolent stage manager, ticking down the minutes to curtain up. Beneath it, on a bench, wet with October drizzle, sat two actors rehearsing for the same audition but seemingly from different worlds. 

Sebastian, mid-forties, wore a coat that had once been tailored and now resembled a curtain from a provincial theatre, the kind that had witnessed both triumph and mildew. His hair, once dark, had faded to that particular shade of grey favoured by faltering hopes and theatre ghosts. He muttered Lear’s storm speech with the intensity of a man trying to summon actual weather. 

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!” 

A passing commuter jumped and spilled coffee onto his Financial Times. 

Meanwhile, Jade, twenty-something, luminous in neon trainers, a cropped puffer jacket, and headphones like chrome saucers, tapped her phone and recited a monologue from Love Island with breathy conviction. 

“I just feel like... you weren’t being real with me like, and I need someone who’s, like, emotionally available, like?” 

Her voice echoed faintly against the glass façade of WHSmith, where a display of celebrity gossip magazines grinned approvingly back at her. 

They paused. The station hummed around them: the hiss of steam from coffee carts, the metallic groan of trains, the gossip of pigeons with suspiciously urban accents. A tannoy declared delays to Southampton with the world-weariness of a Shakespearean fool. 

Sebastian turned, eyes narrowing in disbelief. “You’re rehearsing that here?” 

Jade didn’t even look up. “You’re shouting about cheeks and wind. I figured we were both being weird.” 

He sniffed, affronted. “It’s Lear. It’s timeless.” 

She smiled, still scrolling. “So’s heartbreak. Want half a wrap?” 

He hesitated. The last time a stranger had offered him food in a station, it had been a charity volunteer and a cheese sandwich that smelled of regret. But he accepted. 

It was vegan. It tasted like ambition and hummus. 

They chewed in silence, watching the arrivals board flicker as though trying to remember what punctuality felt like. A laminated sign on the pillar beside them read: 

AUDITIONS TODAY: “THE TEMPEST ISLAND” — Shakespeare meets Reality. Chemistry Test Required. 

Sebastian sighed deeply, like a man remembering his first divorce. 

“This is what it’s come to. Mashing the Bard with beach tantrums.” 

Jade grinned, unfazed. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” 

“It is a bad thing,” he said, gesturing with the vehemence of someone who had once performed Ibsen in Croydon. “Art reduced to a sunburnt popularity contest!” 

“Mate,” Jade replied, “you’re sitting under a clock, shouting at the air. Maybe popularity isn’t your problem.” 

Sebastian blinked. He wasn’t used to being heckled by someone whose accessories glowed in the dark. 

He tried to reclaim dignity. “You’re not… serious about this audition, are you?” 

“I am,” she said, chin up. “I left Love Island early. Didn’t cry once. Now I want to act. Properly.” 

He studied her. “You’ve read Lear?” 

“In secret,” she said softly. “My nan loved it. She said Cordelia was the only one who made sense.” 

Sebastian blinked again, this time less condescendingly. “Cordelia. Not the usual gateway drug.” 

“I don’t do usual.” 

For a moment, the two actors, one from the world of tragedy, the other from tanning products, sat in unlikely harmony. 

Then the tanoy crackled again: ‘Due to leaves on the line, all trains are delayed by one hour.’ 

Jade sighed. “Great. My mascara’s got a curfew.” 

Sebastian chuckled, a sound he hadn’t made in months. “An hour to kill. Fancy doing something productive?” 

“What do you suggest? “Start a podcast about disappointment?” 

“Tempting,” he said. “But I was thinking… a rehearsal.” 

She pulled out her script, creased, neon-pink Post-its marking emotional beats like a child’s treasure map. “Wanna swap?” 

He raised an eyebrow. “You want to do Lear?” 

“Yeah. You do Love Island.” 

He looked appalled. “I’d rather be buried in Luton.” 

“Come on, theatre boy. Stretch your range. You’ll survive a little heartbreak monologue.” 

They traded pages. 

Jade stood, brushed drizzle off her jacket, and cleared her throat. “Right. How’s it go…?” 

She launched into Lear’s storm speech with raw, untrained fury, arms flailing, vowels colliding, consonants rebelling. But there was something electric in it, something unpolished and true. 

Sebastian watched, astonished. Her “Blow, winds!” sounded less like a classical recitation and more like an ex’s voicemail after tequila or two. 

“You sound like someone who’s been dumped on live TV,” he said. 

She grinned. “You sound like someone who’s never been.” 

“Touché.” He rose, adjusted his scarf, and began her monologue. 

“I just feel like... you weren’t being real with me, and I need someone who’s, like, emotionally available?” 

It was awkward. He gestured too much, annunciated every syllable as if narrating the fall of Rome. But halfway through, something shifted. When he reached, “I just need someone who sees me,” his voice cracked—not theatrically, but truthfully. 

They paused. Even the pigeons seemed to stop eavesdropping. 

“You’re good,” she said quietly. 

“So are you.” 

They rehearsed together, blending lines like cocktails. Lear’s rage met reality TV’s vulnerability. Jade improvised: “You’re like... a storm in a dressing gown.” 

Sebastian countered, “And you, madam, are a tempest in lip gloss.” 

They laughed until a busker started playing Wonderwall, at which point laughter gave way to existential dread. 

After forty minutes of improvising, their dynamic had settled into something resembling chemistry, chaotic, unlikely, but real. Jade taught Sebastian to loosen up his vowels; he taught her how to find breath between emotions. 

At one point, she tried to teach him how to “smoulder for camera.” The result looked like he was having a stroke. 

He retaliated by making her speak iambic pentameter while balancing a Pret coffee on her head. She spilled it down her sleeve, shrieked, and declared, “This is why people quit the arts.” 

“People quit the arts,” Sebastian said dryly, “because the arts quit them first.” 

“Depressing much?” she replied, laughing. 

“Occupational hazard.” 

The rain intensified, blurring the reflections in the concourse floor. They moved under the clock, where the steady tick-tock seemed to score their accidental duet. 

“So,” Jade asked, “what’s your deal? You always hang around train stations quoting Shakespeare?” 

“I used to have a theatre company,” he said. “Until the Arts Council decided the Midlands didn’t need more tragedy.” 

“What was it called?” 

“‘Bare Boards.’ No set, no funding, no audience. Just bare boards.” 

“Catchy,” she said, with genuine admiration. “You sound like a proper actor.” 

He smiled faintly. “And you sound like a proper disruptor.” 

She shrugged. “I’m just trying to prove I’m more than slow-motion montages and spray tan.” 

“You are,” he said simply. 

For a moment, she looked at him, not as a relic, but as an equal. 

A casting assistant appeared at last, clipboard in hand and hair that defied both gravity and sincerity. “You two; chemistry test. Now.” 

Jade and Sebastian exchanged a look. 

Inside, the audition room was bare except for a camera, a fold-out table, and a weary-looking director wearing an ironic beanie. A script lay open: Lear’s storm speech mashed with a Love Island breakup. 

Sebastian took one side of the stage. Jade the other. 

“Action.” 

Sebastian raged. Jade pouted. He declaimed to thunder; she whispered to betrayal. They circled each other like mismatched weather systems, his storm meeting her summer squall. 

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” 

“You always do this!” she cried, tears (real ones) threatening to ruin her mascara. “You make everything about the storm instead of just listening!” 

“Do not call me fool, woman!” 

“I didn’t. I called you dramatic!” 

It shouldn’t have worked. But it did. Somehow, in the clash between Lear’s grandeur and Love Island’s heartbreak, something deeply human surfaced. 

Sebastian dropped to his knees. “I gave you everything!” 

Jade folded her arms. “You gave me weather warnings!” 

The director blinked. The assistant whispered, “I think we’ve just invented postmodern realism.” 

When the scene ended, silence hung heavy. 

The director finally said, “Loved it darlings.” 

Back under the clock, the drizzle had turned into full English rain outside the station 

“So?” she asked. 

“They said we didn’t get it,” Sebastian replied. “But they want us for a podcast.” 

“Podcast?” 

“‘Between Scenes,’ apparently. Where Shakespeare meets heartbreak.” 

Jade laughed. “I’d listen to that. Might even host it.” 

He smiled. “They want us to co-host.” 

“No way.” 

“Yes way.” 

She slumped back on the bench. “Well, that’s one way to get discovered.” 

He nodded. “Or rediscovered.” 

The clock ticked above them, steady and forgiving. 

Over the following weeks, Between Scenes became a cult hit. Their first episode: “To Be or Not to Text Back”—trended for three days. Listeners adored the odd chemistry: Sebastian’s rumbling gravitas against Jade’s sparkling irreverence. 

She taught him slang; he taught her soliloquy. In one episode, she compared Macbeth’s ambition to influencer culture (“He’d definitely have a ring light”); in another, he described Hamlet’s indecision as “classic ghosting.” 

Fans wrote in droves. One listener called it “therapy in iambic pentameter.” 

Their producer, a woman named Claudia who wore exclusively linen, told them they were “unexpectedly zeitgeisty.” 

Sebastian pretended not to know what that meant. Jade pretended she hadn’t Googled “zeitgeisty meaning” on the Tube. 

As their fame grew, so did their friendship. They met weekly  under the clock—part superstition, part tradition. 

Jade brought oat-milk lattes. Sebastian brought quotes. 

“So,” she asked one grey morning, “do you still hate reality TV?” 

He considered. “I hate it less. I find it... tragically honest.” 

“See?” she said. “Told you we’re basically doing the same thing. You have your storm speeches, we have our villa re-couplings. It’s all drama.” 

“Yes,” he said. “But you have better lighting.” 

She laughed. “And you have better diction.” 

They clinked coffee cups. 

Months later, The Tempest Island premiered—without them. Critics called it “bewildering,” “humidly confusing,” and “Shakespeare’s worst hangover.” 

Jade sent Sebastian a link. “We dodged a sand-covered bullet.” 

He replied, “Indeed. Some storms should remain at sea.” 

Their podcast, meanwhile, was nominated for a British Podcast Award. 

At the ceremony, Jade wore a silver dress that looked like starlight on water; Sebastian wore his old theatre coat, now professionally dry-cleaned. 

When they won, she hugged him so tightly he almost dropped his acceptance notes. 

He leaned into the microphone and said, “To anyone out there who thinks Shakespeare and heartbreak don’t mix—you’ve clearly never been ghosted in verse.” 

The audience roared. 

Later, they returned to Waterloo to celebrate. 

Under the clock, they unwrapped supermarket sandwiches and a bottle of prosecco. 

Jade raised her plastic cup. “To Between Scenes.” 

“To improbable partnerships,” Sebastian added. 

She smiled. “You know, my nan would’ve loved you.” 

“I would’ve adored her. Anyone who quotes Cordelia can sit at my table.” 

The Tanoy announced the last train to Woking. The pigeons had gone to roost. Outside the drizzle returned, softer now, like applause from the heavens. 

Sebastian looked at Jade. “You realise, if someone wrote this, no one would believe it?” 

“Yeah,” she said. “But that’s what makes it good.” 

He nodded. “Lear and Love Island.” 

“Storm and heart.” 

“Tragedy and timing.” 

The clock ticked above them, patient and kind. 

Jade looked up. “You ever think maybe it’s not just counting minutes?” 

“What else would it be doing?” 

“Waiting,” she said. “For the next scene.” 

Sebastian smiled. “Then we’d better not keep it waiting.” 

“Romeo & Juliet?” asked Jade.