Page 50 of What Would Dolly Do?

I waited nervously backstage as the audience took their seats for the Midnight Mischief Variety Show where a bunch of Dorrie’s talented mates were getting ready to perform.

I say ‘backstage’ but it was hardly more than a curtained off area in a re-purposed hotel bar – a fancy dressing room at the prestigious Grand Ole Opry it was not.

The irony that I should be sound-checking in Nashville’s top spot right at that moment was not lost on me.

I’d checked my phone – half-hoping to find missed calls from someone stateside trying to track me down, half-relieved there weren’t any.

Thoughts of the incredible opportunity I had been forced to forgo and how Tom would soon be performing ‘Moonlight Home’ without me had to be firmly pushed to the back of my mind.

I needed to concentrate on the task in hand, the need to stop Guy Grayson in his tracks and prevent any further attempts to sabotage my life, my name and my reputation.

If we could humiliate the scumbag at the same time then that would be an entertaining bonus.

My broken heart was still managing to beat pretty fast as nervous anticipation began to build. I was anxious to see if Tatiana would succeed with even the first part of the plan, getting Guy to come along to take his seat ready for a show he had no idea he was going to be part of.

There were lots of distractions around to help take my mind off my anxiety.

Jeffrey the magician, or ‘The Great Marveloso’ as he preferred to be known on stage, was calming his own nerves by juggling assorted fruit.

The sight of oranges, apples and bananas whirling around was impressive enough but when he saw me watching he gave me a wink and boasted, ‘I can do it with pumpkins and pineapples too!’ I wasn’t sure what to say about that so I just gave him a cheesy thumbs-up. He seemed happy with that response.

I’d been so engrossed with the revolving fruit salad I’d missed the arrival of Tatiana and Guy. The first I knew that they were in the building was when Tatiana popped her head around the curtain to say hi.

‘It is Reba, yes?’ Tatiana’s disembodied head addressed me and I nodded to the beautiful face I was confronted by.

Her hair was a wild mass of black curls piled high on top of her head and tumbling down over one shoulder, her eyes accentuated by a feline winged sweep of black eyeliner.

She stepped around the curtain and I took in her dancer’s physique encased in a skin-tight black satin jumpsuit.

A pair of sky-high strappy sandals completed her killer look and I noticed they had sparkly gold wings on the heels.

I suspected Tatiana was less of an angel and more of a devil in disguise.

No wonder Guy had agreed to accompany her to a late-night variety show, I reckoned she could get most men to follow her to the ends of the earth.

There was a quick chat between performers about the running order.

Tatiana would be performing at the start of the show: she thought Guy would be more manageable if he’d had a glimpse of her athletic abilities early on.

I peeped around the black drapes and spotted Guy immediately.

With his bouffant blond bonce and checked sports coat he looked completely out of place in the diverse, slightly grungy Fringe crowd.

Was this going to work? It was too late to voice my reservations.

Jeffrey, sorry … ‘The Great Marveloso’ was already stepping onto the tiny stage and telling the audience to expect to be dazzled and amazed by what they were about to see.

They should also have been warned to expect the unexpected but Marveloso kept that up his magic sleeve along with some marked playing cards and a length of silk bunting.

I had to admit, Tatiana was absolutely mesmerising when she took her place in the spotlight.

Beneath her satin jumpsuit she’d been concealing a whole arsenal of lethal weapons; a tanned and toned body encased in little more than a sparkly bikini.

To the sound of a pulsating backbeat she twisted herself into ever more incredible positions and I watched Guy’s jaw slacken and his eyes goggle: he was transfixed.

So transfixed that when The Great Marveloso made his way back to the stage through the audience, shaking hands with everyone and commenting on Tatiana’s wonderful performance as he did so, Guy had no idea that his mobile phone had been lifted from his pocket with impeccable sleight of hand.

Tatiana handed me Guy’s phone as soon as she stepped off stage.

I felt like I was in some kind of heist movie.

Jeffrey had palmed it to her as he’d held her hand for her bow and the first part of Dorrie’s plan was now in play.

We’d all agreed we needed more than just suspicion before we proceeded with any sort of revenge or public humiliation of Guy.

Our hunch about him being behind all the nastiness aimed my way may well be correct but I wanted proof before we took things any further.

Tatiana whispered Guy’s passcode to me as she zipped herself back into her jumpsuit.

How she had that information I had no idea but there wasn’t time to ask before she slipped back out front to take her place next to Guy for the next part of the show.

As she shimmied past him in his aisle seat he was oblivious to everything but her destabilising presence.

As I tapped in the code, all the proof I needed was now in my hands.

Literally. The phone contained the CCTV footage of me from the back room at Grayson’s Jewellers, the vicious messages I’d received in Nashville threatening to share it plus evidence of fake social media profiles Guy had clearly created so he could post vile content and terrible reviews about Sonny’s Bar.

He also had several candid photos of me taken while I was walking in the street.

What the …? Had he been stalking me? My number in his contacts wasn’t listed under my name either, instead he’d renamed me ‘Bitchface’. Nice.

‘Are we on?’ Stella asked as she joined me in the curtained backstage cubicle.

‘Oh yes,’ I told her while I seethed at Guy’s unjust hatred of me. What had I ever done to him? Was I not allowed to reject his clumsy advances without suffering these ridiculous consequences? ‘It’s time to end this nonsense.’

Stella gave The Great Marveloso the cue he’d been waiting for and he gave ventriloquist Freddie Forsyth a big introduction.

Freddie’s act was hysterical; he didn’t use a puppet like a children’s entertainer, there wasn’t a goggle-eyed teddy, a hairy monkey or a fluffy big bird to be seen anywhere.

Instead, he threw his voice into inanimate objects like a wallet belonging to a guy on the front row and a handbag offered by a woman on an aisle seat.

The characters he created had loads to say about their owners, not all of it complimentary, but it was so funny no one got offended.

Next, he asked for a volunteer to come up on stage.

I found I was holding my breath but Tatiana was ready.

She was too fast for Guy, he didn’t stand a chance once she threw his hand up into the air while batting her lashes at him with a pleading look he found irresistible.

Once Freddie had warmly welcomed a nervous-looking Guy onstage and tried to put him at his ease he produced a strange-looking contraption from a box I hadn’t noticed before.

Guy hadn’t noticed it either and looked pretty alarmed but he couldn’t back out now, not while the audience were looking at him and the tantalising Tatiana was watching expectantly.

None of us were quite expecting what happened next however.

The weird-looking item was like a mask that covered the lower part of the face.

Freddie fixed it in place with straps at the back of Guy’s head and suddenly his tanned and botoxed appearance was transformed into a gormless puppet with the large mouth operated by a string pulled by Freddie.

It was impossible to read Guy’s full expression with only his startled eyes now visible but I couldn’t imagine he was very happy with the squeaky, effeminate voice Freddie now had him speaking in. It was so clever. Freddie was literally able to put words into Guy’s mouth.

It started off with Freddie asking Guy a series of increasingly ridiculous questions about his job, marital status and hobbies.

It didn’t matter what Guy might have wanted to say, his mouth was covered and only the ventriloquist had access to a microphone so his was the only voice we all could hear.

Thanks to Freddie and his voice trickery we learned Guy was a window-dresser in a sex shop, was single but ready to mingle and loved to spend weekends morris dancing and grooming his collection of budgerigars.

The audience were splitting their sides by this point and I suspected Guy’s ego was torn: on the one hand this was all very embarrassing but on the other he was probably getting off on being the star of the show.

At this point Freddie took things up another gear and declared that Guy, or ‘Helluvaguy’ as he had decided to nickname him, was about to be reunited with the greatest object of his desire.

‘There’s a very special woman in your life, isn’t there, Helluvaguy?’ Freddie said and while Guy shook his head back and forth in confusion he appeared to answer in a falsetto voice:

‘Oooo, Mister Freddie, how d’you know about her?’

‘Oh I know lots of secrets about you, Helluvaguy,’ Freddie told him, adding, ‘Would you like to meet the object of all your secret desires? The woman you love more than any other? Say the word and I’ll bring her on stage right now.’

Beads of sweat had started to form on Guy’s forehead and his eyes darted around the room trying to figure out what Freddie was driving at.

I could almost hear the cogs whirring in Guy’s brain as to whether Freddie was referring to Tatiana sitting in the audience, his wife JoJo … or maybe … somebody else?

‘Oooo, yes please, Mr Freddie,’ was the eager response the audience heard Guy give, despite him closing his eyes and continuing to shake his head vigorously.

With that, onto the stage stalked Dorrie, all made up as the queen of country music, Miss Dolly Parton herself.

Guy jumped as if scalded and started blinking even more rapidly.

Did he think for a moment it was me, I wondered?

He knew very well I’d performed as Dolly, so that might be his instant reaction.

As ‘Dolly’ sauntered over and he got a closer look, though, he realised he didn’t recognise this particular impersonator and I saw his shoulders relax. It was a mistake to be so naive.

Trapped between the two of them Guy was now a puppet and a plaything for two talented performers.

Freddie pulled the strings and provided the voice to make it appear Guy was singing, while Dorrie jiggled and gyrated around him and together they performed a very special, quite ridiculous version of ‘We’ve Got Tonight’.

By now the audience were in helpless fits but something oddly unexpected was happening on stage.

As the crowd yelped with laughter and guffawed for more, Guy stopped looking quite so pained and forgot all about shaking his head as if to say ‘No’.

He actually started joining in. The ego on this man really was quite something.

Buoyed by all the cheers he was starting to enjoy it!

He swayed to the music, puffed out his chest and was even so bold, and foolish, to attempt to run his fingers up and down ‘Dolly’s’ well upholstered body.

Dorrie was quick to give his wandering hands a smart slap for that but when that elicited an even bigger response from the crowd Guy just carried on cavorting and carousing.

The applause at the end was thunderous and Guy merrily took his bow gripping the hands of Freddie and Dorrie as he did so.

When Freddie removed the vent mask from Guy’s face I was astounded to see a huge grin slapped all over it.

The nerve of him! He was too busy peering into the audience to see if Tatiana was in lustful raptures over his comedic capabilities to notice Dorrie wave her goodbyes to the crowd and be quickly replaced by The Great Marveloso who had reappeared, as if by magic, for the grand finale.

It was like shooting fish in a barrel, like taking candy from a baby, the ease with which Jeffrey, sorry, The Great Marveloso, was able to convince Guy to undergo hypnosis.

It was utterly breathtaking. We’d all been so worried about this moment: would Guy allow himself to be put into a hypnotic trance?

But in the end he rolled over like a puppy about to have his tummy tickled.

‘What if he point blank refuses?’ I’d asked when I’d first heard this part of the plan.

‘Jeff’s a bloody hypnotist! Can’t he just put a spell on him or something?

’ Stella had retorted. But she’d had it explained to her, at great length by Jeffrey, the ethics of putting people under hypnosis on stage and how, in any case, a willing volunteer is always more susceptible to a trance-like state than somebody who is resisting.

We needn’t have worried. As soon as The Great Marveloso told Guy what an absolute natural he was on stage, how much the audience were loving him and how he would be perfect for the showstopper end part of the show Guy eagerly agreed to be hypnotised.

He probably expected he was going to be made to look a bit daft, maybe do a silly dance, bark like a dog or speak in a foreign language every time Jeff said a certain trigger word.

He was soaking up the laughter and the applause in equal measure and he seemed game for anything that was going to be thrown at him so he could carry on showing off to the audience and to Tatiana too, of course.

There was a little bit of that sort of end-of-the-pier nonsense right at the start, The Great Marveloso did have to be sure Guy was fully under after all, but once Guy was clearly completely hypnotised the final act was revealed.

The Great Marveloso revealed to the spell-bound audience that Guy was about to face a lie detector. It literally was the moment of truth .