Days of Wonder
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Synopsis
The incredible new novel from the author of bestseller A Boy Made of Blocks.
Magical, heartbreaking, beautiful—Days of Wonder reminds us that stories have the power to save lives.
Tom, single father to Hannah, is the manager of a tiny local theatre. On the same day each year, he and its colourful cast of part-time actors have staged a fantastical production just for his little girl, a moment of magic to make her childhood unforgettable.
But there is another reason behind these annual shows: the very first production followed Hannah's diagnosis with a heart condition that both of them know will end her life early. And now, with Hannah a funny, tough girl of 15 on the brink of adulthood, that time is coming.
With the theatre under threat of closure, Hannah and Tom have more than one fight on their hands to stop the stories ending. But maybe, just maybe, one final day of magic will save them both.
A tale about growing up, the beauty of a special bond between father and daughter, and finding magic in everyday life, Days of Wonder is the most moving novel you'll listen to all year.
Release date: June 7, 2018
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages: 400
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Days of Wonder
Keith Stuart
I suppose I really ought to begin with Hannah’s diagnosis, but no, we’re not going there, not yet. This is a story about magic, and therefore I will start somewhere magical. Or kind of magical. Oh look, it’ll make sense, trust me. Let’s begin two weeks after the diagnosis, on Hannah’s fifth birthday – because this is what life is like sometimes: you’re planning for a big day and then suddenly – pow! – have some shocking news about your daughter, no, go on, I insist. Of course, I didn’t explain things fully to Hannah, how could I? But she was already wise, wiser than me – wise enough to look into my eyes and understand the essence of what the doctors had told me, and what was coming. We stood at the bus stop outside the hospital, the cold sun glinting off the scratched Plexiglas shelter. I tried hard to swallow, but it felt like I had a bowling ball in my throat. She looked up at me.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’
And she put out her tiny fist for me to bump. I bumped it.
Anyway.
Anyway.
Where was I?
So yes, I thought, I have to do something special for her birthday – something to take us out of this place. I asked her what she wanted, and she shrugged and said, ‘I just want to play Lego with my friend Jay.’ That’s easy enough, I thought.
‘And fairies,’ she added. ‘Can I have real fairies?’
She had this book she absolutely loved – a fairy tale collection that had been handed down through my mum’s family. It was incredibly ancient, so had none of the neurotic delicacy of a modern translation: kids died in the forest, dwarfs were eaten by witches, wolves butchered woodcutters – just horrible stuff. Hannah adored it. But she especially loved the idea of fairies – not the supermarket fancy-dress fairies with their pink sparkly wings and crystal wands, but the old-school fairies; the mischief-makers, cavorting in the woods and trapping humans in magical glades. Whenever we got to the end of a story, she’d always sigh and say, ‘But fairies aren’t real, are they?’ and I’d tell her they definitely were, but that only special people got to see them. It was just a joke, a little routine to end the day. But on that night, the night of her fifth birthday, she asked as usual, only this time I said to her, ‘Look out of the window later and you may be lucky.’ She laughed at me dismissively, and buried her head in the duvet until I got up to go. But I knew she was curious, because she was always curious.
So I kissed her on top of her head, her curly hair bedraggled and knotty because neither of us were any good at combing it; then I walked out of the room, closing the door behind me – except I left a gap, just enough to peek through. And sure enough, when she thought I was gone, she pulled back the duvet and crept towards the window…
I should explain at this point that I was a theatre manager, and before that an actor. When I was eight my parents took me to see Dick Whittington one Christmas and that was it, I was hooked. I begged them to take me back the next night, and the next. As a teenager, my friends were following Bowie, Pink Floyd and the Clash, while I was obsessed with the RSC, the Royal Court and the Old Vic. The magic I always believed in most was the magic of the stage, the miracles that take place when you put performers in front of an audience. You should bear this in mind for what comes next.
Outside Hannah’s room, the night was almost completely black, the stars obscured behind a layer of distant cloud. Our house backs onto a field and during the day we’d sometimes see horse riders pass by, following the bridleway up to the woods. But at night there was nothing but darkness and then the distant twinkling lights from the next town miles away.
I could see that Hannah was now on tiptoes at the window, her small body silhouetted against the darkness outside. Suddenly, her head flicked to the right. From behind the tall hedge at the rear of our neighbour’s garden there was a curious glow, orange and warm, like a bonfire – except there was no crackling, just the sound of very gentle music, almost lost in the buffeting wind. Then, indistinct at first but gradually louder, there were voices too. They were singing.
I heard Hannah take a sharp intake of breath, and then she rubbed furiously at her eyes with the sleeve of her pyjamas, before staring out again. She didn’t move away, she didn’t shrink from the window – she stayed still, as though entranced, as though connected to whatever was happening outside. Then as the music got louder, she somehow stirred from her reverie.
‘Daddy!’ she shouted. But there was no fear in her voice; it was not even shock or surprise. It was delight.
‘Daddy,’ she said again. ‘I can see them, I can see them!’
‘See what?’ I said. And I was bounding into the bedroom, pretending that I had no idea what was going on. She grabbed my hand and dragged me to the window.
‘The fairies,’ she said. ‘There are fairies here!’
And sure enough, dancing along the bridle path at the end of the garden, waving and smiling as they passed, was a line of beautiful figures in luminous white dresses and giant fluttering wings. Some held lanterns suspended from long staffs, the candlelight flickering as they moved; others were wrapped in shawls of flashing fairy lights. Hannah watched, at first transfixed, then banging on the window, waving delightedly. When one figure stopped, leant on the garden gate and blew a kiss up towards the window, she gasped. It was the first time in a week I’d seen her forget herself and everything else. If only for an instant, it wiped away the darkness of the preceding days. The figures danced and sang, the light from the lanterns forming a halo around them. Gradually, as the caravan of fairies passed, the music faded and the glow dispersed. The darkness returned, but not as deep or as black as it had once seemed. Something of the fairies had been left behind for ever.
I’ll let you into a little secret. Technically, they weren’t fairies. If you listened carefully you would recognise that the music was not some enchanting lullaby or mystical ballad – it was ‘When Two Become One’ by the Spice Girls, playing on a ghetto blaster. The thing is, when you manage a theatre, one of the perks of the job is twenty-four-hour access to enthusiastic amateur actors, who respond positively to the request, ‘Will you come and dance past our house on Sunday night dressed in glowing leotards?’ We also had a reasonably stocked props department so getting hold of Victorian lanterns at short notice wasn’t as much of a problem for us as it would have been for someone relying on Homebase.
Anyway, I’d found this silly way to lighten the darkness, and it had worked. Eventually, Hannah bolted from the window and made for the stairs, determined to see the show up close. But by the time she got to the back door, the fairies were long gone (as we had arranged), scarpering into the alley a few houses down. I still don’t know if she believed they were real or knew it was a show, but when I caught her up, she was standing in the open doorway, the breeze blowing her hair around her shoulders. She glanced up at me, then grabbed my hand.
‘Again,’ she said. ‘Again.’
I suppose it was clear from that point that Hannah would be a sucker for escapism, for theatrical wonder – it was in her genes after all. As for me, I knew I had a way, however trivial and momentary, to help her cope with what had happened, and what was to come. I knew make-believe would be important.
So every year I arranged something like this for her birthday. A little play, a little surprise. It became something of a ritual to ward off the reality of the health tests and assessments that closed in every autumn.
The years passed, faster than I could ever have imagined, and when she was thirteen she decided she just wanted to spend her birthday with her friends. A walk into town, pizza, videos. It was always going to happen. All the make-believe in the world will not stop time.
Three months before her sixteenth birthday, I began to wonder if there was time to put on just one more show for her. It felt important – as though a little part of the future depended on it. I had this persistent feeling that something terrible was coming – we needed to be prepared and this was the only way to do it. I was a big believer in the magic of the theatre, you see. Did I mention that?
Don’t die on stage. Don’t even think about it. I’m completely fucking serious.
This is the rip-roaring motivational speech drifting through my head as I walk out beneath the theatre’s glaring spotlights for the first time; for the first proper time, at least. As an actor.
I’ve been here before of course, lots of times. When your dad is a theatre manager, you quite literally grow up on the stage – which sounds incredibly glamorous until you learn that this particular stage is in a small market town in Somerset, and not, say, New York. I am also making my debut for the local drama group, not for the RSC, and while we’re being totally honest, the play isn’t Hamlet or A Doll’s House, or anything else I’ve been pretending to read for GCSE Drama. The play is a ‘bawdy farce’, written in the seventies by some guy I’ve never heard of – my dad calls it Carry On Being a Sexist Prick, but that’s not its actual name. Anyway, this sort of thing still goes down well with audiences, so we’re stuck with it. Sally, the drama club creative director, has at least adapted the script for the modern era – which has meant taking out the racist jokes. The sexist ones have stayed in though, because apparently they’re fine as long as we perform them with irony. I have learned a lot about what adults consider acceptable since joining the drama club last year. I don’t get out much so I take my life lessons where I can.
By the time I’m due on stage, things are already in full swing. The set is a seventies suburban living room, complete with a lime-green sofa, shagpile carpet and a bamboo coffee table. Ted is putting in a brilliant performance in the lead role as a neurotic and flustered accountant, staring retirement in the face and having to deal with a moribund home life. It was genius casting by Sally, because he is, in real life, a neurotic and flustered accountant staring retirement in the face and having to deal with a moribund home life. Natasha is playing his wife, even though she is twenty years too young and about a hundred times too cool to be married to Ted. She used to do PR for an art gallery in London, but she and her husband decided to escape the rat race when their daughter Ashley was born. She set up a ‘micro agency’ for galleries and artists in the West Country, but now she’s on maternity leave with their second child and it’s driving her a bit mad. She told me that living in Somerset feels like being trapped in a cross between Groundhog Day and Deliverance. I looked up Deliverance on Google – I don’t think it was a compliment. Dora, our costume designer, found her a grey wig in a costume hire store, and Margaret – the drama club’s oldest member at eighty-one – said it makes Natasha look like a French harlot. Margaret is the rudest, most cynical person I ever met, and also one of my closest friends. Did I mention I don’t get out much? Anyway, I also had to look up ‘harlot’ on Google and it is now my favourite word.
So that’s the scene I am about to step into: a neurotic middle-class couple in seventies Britain, about to host a dinner party for the new neighbours, who seem extremely posh and respectable. But then the hosts’ drunken teenage daughter – that’s me – comes home from a party and they have to hide her in the understairs cupboard. I am wearing a garish dress made entirely out of polyester and static electricity, and it’s while I’m trying to flatten out the skirt that Sally nods at me from the small shadowy backstage area. My cue is coming.
Deep breaths.
I feel my heart thudding, and I don’t want to think about that right now. There is the sound effect of a doorbell, and then I’m on, out through the black curtains at the edge of the stage and into the open auditorium in front of rows of people who have paid actual money to be entertained.
Oh shit, here we go.
The first thing I notice is that the air has this weird crackle to it, a kind of all-enveloping tension that seems to tingle all over my skin – it’s either the anticipation of the crowd or the electricity being generated by this polyester fire hazard I’m wearing. I try to block it out and concentrate on what I’m doing, which is giggling and shrugging apologetically when my parents ask what the heck is wrong with me. Then I stagger past Natasha, whose wig has sort of slipped over her right eye at a jaunty angle. Then I pratfall onto the hostess trolley. I hear some laughs from the audience, which is a relief because I have zero personal experience of alcohol. In drama, we’re learning about the theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski who said all the best acting comes from the ‘emotional memory’ of the performer – you have to call on things you’ve experienced. However, the only emotional memory I have of alcohol is seeing my dad fall off a pub bench at his thirty-seventh birthday party and cracking his stupid head open. So I watched a lot of Hollyoaks and also typed ‘drunken teenage girls’ into an image search engine. That was a mistake I won’t make again.
So now I’m on stage, collapsed across the ugly furniture. Ted and Natasha are splashing me in the face with vase water to try and sober me up – and the audience is chuckling along. It’s fun, it’s actually going well.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I spot Dad – or Tom as he is known to everyone else – watching me from the side of the stage. He is wearing his usual outfit of black jeans, shirt, tie and blazer. His hair is all spiky, and the gel glistens in the light. My friends Jenna and Daisy say he looks like an ageing pop star – sort of handsome, but filling out a bit, and a few grey hairs here and there. Whatever he looks like, there’s not much family resemblance between us. Judging by the photos, I’m much more like Mum – kind of skinny, kind of okay-looking, grey eyes, mega-sharp cheekbones that look swollen if I put on too much blusher. Oh and crazy curly hair that Jenna refers to as an ‘explosion in a corkscrew factory’. (It’s pretty useful for when you’re playing a drunk.) Anyway, Dad’s expression is the familiar mix of deranged pride and encouragement that I have become accustomed to. That’s another thing my friends say about him: he’s not like other dads because he always looks happy, he isn’t obsessed with sport and he actually listens to them when they talk. He invests. These are apparently rare commodities in fatherhood, which seems sad to me.
He has been bringing me here ever since I was a toddler, when he first got the job as manager. He’d lift me up onto the stage and act out stories for me. He practically taught me to read sitting up here, a single spotlight on us, working our way through fairy-tale books (which I was obsessed with and still am) as well as the standard young thespian syllabus: Swish of the Curtain, Ballet Shoes, The Town in Bloom. Those were the best days. He’d pick me up from school and bring me straight to the theatre and while he sat with some touring company planning their show, I’d prance about the stage or leg it along the aisles, yelling and singing. Then, for my birthdays, we started to plan these little plays together, and we’d put them on with the drama group, for all our families and friends. It became a sort of tradition. It meant so much to me when I was younger. It feels like a long time ago.
Of course I was desperate to be in a real actual play, but Dad always tried to put me off. ‘We can’t let people believe there is nepotism in the arts,’ he’d say. ‘The critics will tear us apart like wild dogs.’ I seriously doubt the theatre reviewer at the local paper would be capable of tearing anything apart, let alone a person – being as she’s a gentle seventy-year-old woman with a penchant for Noël Coward. But Dad was adamant. Last year, he refused to let me play Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest because he said there were some dangerous stunts – I mean, that’s such bullshit.
When they’d decided on this particular play, and it had a part for a fifteen-year-old girl, I literally begged Sally for the role. She said it was fine but I’d have to ask Dad for ‘health reasons’. I thought it was hopeless, to be honest. I know it’s because he worries about me and not because he thinks I’ll be crap at acting and bring shame and disrepute on his theatrical empire. Ideally, he’d like to keep me locked up in a small room and never let me out. No wait, that sounds weird. Ideally he’d like to roll me up in bubble wrap and… oh god, whatever, you get the idea. And it’s not like I have grand ambitions to be a big goddamn movie star. I don’t have any ambitions at all; ambitions are so not my thing.
After a whole skit about a soufflé that hasn’t risen (which somehow segues into a really gross mother-in-law joke), Margaret makes a cameo appearance as a nosy next-door neighbour, standing at the front door in a nightgown, her wild grey hair in curlers. She usually tints it in lurid colours and got it done like a rainbow for London Gay Pride last year, where she somehow had her photo taken with Sir Ian McKellen. In the play, she comes round to complain about the noise and threatens to call the police until Ted gives her a bottle of sherry. For the dress rehearsal they used an actual bottle of sherry but she drank the lot before the interval. This time they’ve filled the bottle with cold tea – to her obvious distress.
Next, Ted’s character has to hide me from the neighbours by dragging me to the understairs cupboard at the rear of the stage. This is no shoddy piece of sub-IKEA furniture, by the way; it was purpose-built by Kamil, the drama club’s props manager, who teaches a woodwork diploma at the local college and takes the theatre very seriously. He worked on it for weeks then proudly unveiled to us an actual wooden staircase, complete with cupboard and built-on casters for easy deployment. It’s so solidly constructed that you could conceivably throw it off a cliff and it would still be in one piece at the bottom. Which is probably more than could be said for the person locked inside.
Sorry, I get a bit dark sometimes. Especially when I am being hauled across a stage. It’s sort of weird to be manhandled in front of a roomful of laughing people, but Ted is very professional and also extremely careful not to hold me anywhere that could conceivably get him arrested.
‘How are you doing?’ he whispers as he shoves me in the box. His thin, slightly haggard grey face is a mask of concern and his glasses are slipping off the end of his nose. I nod imperceptibly. Seemingly assured, he tries to slam the door shut, but my arm is still sticking out. Ouch, thanks Ted! He lifts my bruised limb in and slams the door so hard the staircase wobbles. Cue general hilarity.
Now I have to sit here for twenty minutes, which is not great because it’s dark, it’s cramped and there’s no air… this is a crappy combination for someone with my health issues. I’m also feeling extremely hot. Earlier on, Margaret claimed she was on the verge of freezing to death and stormed off to the boiler room to try and kick-start the heating. Maybe she turned it up to warp factor nine. Maybe that’s why I am drenched in sweat. I try to ignore my rapidly increasing heart rate. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. This is the theatre and the show must go on, even when you’re locked in an oven. Fortunately, Kamil has drilled a small spyhole into the door so I can see what’s going on. I spot another couple of actors from the drama group, Rachel and Shaun, enter the stage as the neighbours dressed in ridiculous Oxfam approximations of upper-middle-class seventies casual wear. But that’s not all I notice. Around the entrance to the backstage area there appears to be a large pool of water. Little streams are working their way along the wall towards me. For a second, I wonder if this is a last-minute special effect that my dad has introduced without telling me – but then I notice Shaun nervously eyeing the flood and elbowing Rachel in the side. Something is wrong. Tendrils of water are slithering towards the main stage area, and I’m thinking, is this a hazard? There are all these lights and cables around. Oh god, it’s like an opening scene from Casualty. The whole cast is about to be electrocuted.
Meanwhile in the play, it turns out that the neighbours think they have been invited to a swinging party, rather than a polite dinner soirée. As soon as Ted and Natasha leave the stage to ‘fetch the crudités’, Rachel and Shaun decide this is a code and start removing their clothes. The audience is really into it, guffawing unselfconsciously. Inevitably, the local vicar arrives, played by James, who is twenty-seven, really fit, and also the most devout atheist I’ve ever met. He sees the semi-naked couple and passes out on the sofa. Natasha shouts, ‘I’ll get you a stiff drink, this is not what it seems’, and then opens the cupboard door, at which point I sprawl out, swearing loudly. Everything is happening so quickly and there seems to be no way to subtly communicate to anyone else that we appear to be sinking. The vicar tries to help me up, but I fall on top of him (my favourite part of the play) and we sprawl together on the stage floor unable to extricate ourselves from each other. I try to whisper to James, ‘I think we’re sinking,’ but Natasha drags me up, almost yanking my arm out of its socket, and James crawls out through the door.
Our big finale has my parents chasing me around a table as the embarrassed neighbours get dressed. They finally restrain me, dumping me on a chair at the dining table, just as two police officers turn up, responding to reports of a possible orgy or violent murder. I pass out with my face in a strawberry pavlova. The generously constructed stunt dessert fills my nose and eyes with squirty cream, which has gone rancid under the lights.
And then, the play is over. There are a few tense moments of silence as the lights fade, but they are followed by rapturous applause. I bound to the front of the stage, taking Ted and Natasha’s hands and swinging them extravagantly. For a few seconds, I feel like a proper part of this bizarre little team. Later at the pub, the drama club actors will relive every line, every audience reaction, as they always do after a performance, whether it is good, like this, or bad, like that ill-advised attempt to stage Equus at a local horse and pony show.
I look into the crowds of people, hoping to spot Jenna and Daisy, or perhaps my drama teacher. But all the faces are similar and hard to make out beyond the clapping hands. Ted is hugging me and so is Natasha, and they pat me on the back, and then Natasha is very close and saying something, and I have to lean in to hear it. ‘Can you hear me, Hannah?’ she’s saying. ‘Are you still with us?’ I want to say, ‘I’m great. I’m a STAR.’ But then I realise I can’t really feel my legs, and a swirling black fog has gathered at the edges of my vision. I stagger backwards a bit.
From a long distance away, I feel a hand on my arm, and another on my back, but it seems as though I am falling through them. The world is a woozy carousel of blurred shapes. Suddenly, I worry that the audience can see what’s happening. Oh god, how mortifying. I have a strange hallucinogenic vision of Dad standing at my graveside delivering a eulogy: ‘She died as she lived – like Tommy Cooper.’ Now I know something is very wrong because that’s just fucking weird.
Finally, I manage to say, ‘Oh this is bloody typical.’ Because it is not the first time I’ve done this, not by a long way.
The theatre lights look like stars above me. They swim about in the darkness. Then there is absolutely nothing.
Welcome to my world.
When Hannah was four, she started to complain about feeling tired all the time. It wasn’t just in the early evenings, or after nursery, but all day. She’d stopped bounding about with her friends; she looked pale. I thought it was some sort of virus, or growing pains or something. I made a GP appointment fully expecting to be told what parents are always told: to keep an eye on it, that it’s nothing to worry about. Our doctor was very much of the old school – balding, tall and dour, with the welcoming air of a medieval executioner. You’d gingerly enter his room and he’d sit back in his chair, arms crossed tightly, a reproachful glare etched into his craggy face that said, ‘Come on then, out with it, convince me you’re not another blithering hypochondriac.’ You would list your symptoms and he would shake his head as though you had imagined the whole thing, and then he would tell you that it was perfectly survivable, and you would leave duly chastened. This is what happened when I went in to see him at thirty-one years old, with my lower back in such painful spasm that I couldn’t stand straight for three days. This is what he did when I went in with chest pains when Hannah was three and I was having difficulty coping with parenthood alone all of a sudden. A shake of the head, a few bluff words of castigation, and then an abrupt return to his computer, which was your cue to immediately vacate the room.
So the day I took Hannah in and listed her symptoms, I was expecting the usual brush off and I almost didn’t bother to sit down; but then, after glaring at me for several seconds, he did something I didn’t expect. He put Hannah onto a chair, reached for his stethoscope and listened to her chest. He listened for a long time, dotting it about her torso seemingly at random. ‘It’s cold!’ she complained, squirming away. He said nothing.
Finally, he sat back, took the plugs from his ears, and turned to his computer. Here we go, I thought. I was already standing up, ready to scarper for the door.
‘I’m going to refer you to the cardiology unit at North Somerset Hospital,’ he said. I stopped and sat back down in the chair next to Hannah’s. She sidled onto my knee.
‘Why? What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘Do you have any history of heart disease in your family?’
The wall clock ticked loudly; I could smell instant coffee above the faint ever-present odour of surgical spirit. I did not fully take in what I was being asked.
‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. Why?’
He started tapping at his keyboard.
‘She has a heart murmur. Usually, it’s nothing to worry about, but I want it to be checked. Just in case.’
‘Just in case of what?’
Suddenly bored, Hannah was trying to writhe off my lap.
‘Well, as I say, it’s probably nothing. I wouldn’t want to make any diagnoses at this stage. You should get a letter with an appointment within a fortnight.’
I let Hannah escape from my grip and she ran towards the door, her thin fingers pulling at the handle. I rose from my chair slowly, too confused and intimidated to ask for more information. As I walked towards the door, I heard him turn towards us. I looked back with dawning concern.
‘Goodbye, Mr Rose,’ was all he said.
But the look on his face, the sound in his voice; they were as close as he’d ever come to sympathy. He’d never even said goodbye before.
As we walked away, Hannah’s tiny hand in mine, I felt an awful weight on me, like being suddenly enveloped in a heavy black cloak.
It took me a few seconds to realise it was terror.
All this came back to me as I knelt by Hannah’s side on the stage, the others gathering around as I got close enough to see her breathing. It’s fine, I was thinking, this had happened before, it was just something boring that we had to deal with – like the British weather or televised motor sport. What most concerned me was thinking of something amusing to say when she came round. Something about corpsing on stage? I didn’t know. The important thing was, we’d joke about it. It wouldn’t be frightening. It would be all right.
Somewhere I heard Ted shouting at the audience, assuring them it was just all the excitement and the heat of the lights. He asked if everyone could file out and he thanked them for coming.
So yes, it had been an interesting night at the Willow Tree Theatre. On the plus side, all the actors turned up, we had an audience and the majority of that audience stayed awake until the end of the performance. The absolute dream scenario. On the negative side: Hannah fainted and we had a biblical flood. That, as they say, is show business.
My mind kept tracing back through the previous minutes. What had happened? The play ended well, the entire cast came out on stage. Ted was relaxed and smiling for once, gesturing to his wife Angela in the crowd. Natasha was waving that ridiculous grey wig at her husband who had brought their daughter along, even though I’d explained it might not be a suitable play for a seven-year-old. (‘Ashley is a very mature seven,’ Natasha had assured me. ‘And she’s learned all about swinging parties from her grandmother.’ I did not enquire further.) In the centre was my own daughter, Hannah, on this little stage as a proper actor for the first time, greedily sucking up as much credit and applause as she could get away with. And then suddenly, she stopped moving, her face pale and blank. The noise of the audience seemed to fade, and I watched, unable to move, as she fell. It seemed as though we were both in some sort of dream.
‘I’ve got some water,’ said Shaun, wafting a cup in my direction. ‘And um, talking about water…’
But I wasn’t listening.
‘Hannah,’ I said. ‘Come on, baby, stop hogging the limelight.’
‘Should I call an ambulance?’ asked Natasha, her hand gently resting on my shoulder.
‘She’ll be fine,’ I said quietly.
I saw the slightest movement around her eyes, just a twitch, yet something unmistakable.
‘Hannah,’ I said. ‘Hannah, come back.’
Sally, my closest friend, had seen this before. She knelt down beside me, and quietly brushed Hannah’s hair away from her face.
‘We could just call a doctor?’ she said, her voice soft and reassuring.
I waited a few seconds for something else to happen, some kind of movement – a jolt of the arm, her fingers clasping mine – but there was nothing.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’
Sally was just getting up and I was about to explain what she should say to the paramedics, when a clear voice, caught in the weird acoustics of the stage, resonated around the auditorium.
‘You are such drama queens,’ it said.
And I looked down to see Hannah awake, her head raised slightly, her eyes glazed but becoming focused, her mouth turning into a groggy smile. She tried to sit up and I helped, her ridiculous dress crackling with static against my blazer. She flopped backwards a little and I supported her; Sally was there too, her hand behind Hannah’s back. There was an audible sigh of relief from the other members of the company. Shaun gently offered the cup of water to Hannah and she took it with a drunken waft of her arm, spilling almost half of it but lifting the rest to her mouth and glugging noisily.
‘What happened?’ she said.
‘You passed out,’ replied Ted. ‘During the ovation.’
She looked at me, pushing her wild curly hair out of her eyes.
‘Oh shit,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m really sorry.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I said, taking the empty cup from her. ‘The audience loved it! Fainting was a masterstroke. They’ll be flocking back in their droves.’ But I knew she wasn’t thinking about the play. Whenever this happened, wherever we were, she’d always apologise. And I’d always say don’t be silly, and we’d just put it behind us. We had become adept at it. We were theatre people after all. The show must go on.
‘I need to get changed,’ said Hannah. ‘Before this dress explodes.’ She clambered to her feet and Sally and I gingerly drew our hands away from her as though removing a really risky block in a game of Jenga.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Sally.
‘Is Phil not waiting for you?’ I asked her. Phil was Sally’s husband, a cheery red-faced rugger-bugger and much-admired local property developer.
‘Oh, you know,’ said Sally. ‘He’s not one for the theatre.’
‘But he was here earlier, wasn’t he? I saw you and him after the dress rehearsal.’
She looked like she was about to reply, but then turned back to Hannah.
‘Come on, let’s get you back to the dressing room.’
It was curious – Sally and I had been very close friends for years, but she barely ever mentioned Phil, and I barely ever saw him. I knew he was old-fashioned, that he didn’t want Sally to work after their son Jay was born; perhaps he frowned on platonic friendships between men and women. Perhaps he thought the drama group was a maelstrom of sexual passion. He’d only have to attend one meeting to have that notion soundly quashed.
Hannah and Sally walked slowly down the corridor to the green room. The others stood around quietly looking at me, but trying not to obviously look at me. I could feel the fear and uncertainty radiating off them. I knew I needed to do something to diffuse the tension.
‘It’s fine everyone,’ I said finally. ‘It’s fine. She’ll be all right. It’s just one of those things. Ted, you were hilarious tonight. Natasha, wonderful wig work, keep it up. Rachel, brilliant flirtatious scene with the vicar, well done. Shaun, excellent arse-grabbing, as usual. Oh and… I don’t want to add any more drama to the evening, but does anyone know where all the water is coming from?’
‘Ah yeah, I was trying to tell you about that,’ Shaun said. ‘The boiler’s had a leak. Well, more of an eruption really. It looks like a pipe burst. I’ve switched off the water, but the back room is a lake.’
As an ex-builder, Shaun always came in especially handy whenever part of the theatre broke or collapsed or flooded, which was increasingly often. With his cropped hair, tattoos and Fred Perry tops he looked like the sort of person who would beat up theatregoers in a pub, but thanks to his innate intelligence and a brilliantly determined English teacher he’d cultivated an unlikely interest in British post-war drama. He’s still the only person I know who can quote Look Back in Anger while insulating a loft space. When his brother set up a taxi firm, Shaun persuaded him to call it ‘Godot Cars’, with the advertising catchphrase, ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘How does it look?’ I said to him, trying to draw him ever-so-subtly away from the others.
‘Hard to say, I’m not a plumber. I’ve opened the back doors so a lot of it is draining out. I’ve got a mate who can look at it but not until the morning.’
‘Will we be all set for tomorrow night?’
Shaun shrugged. ‘Ask me tomorrow.’
It was time to get things back on track. . .
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