No Child of Mine (15 page)

‘Perfect. See you then.’

‘Hang on, hang on, aren’t you coming tonight?’

‘Oh, hell yes, I was forgetting about that. Of course I’m going to be there. The whole office is coming. So break a leg, all of you. That should make for an interesting show,’ she added wryly.

Laughing as she rang off, Alex went downstairs to the kitchen and found a bowl of muesli and fruit all laid out, with milk, yoghurt and even a spoon next to it. Smiling at Jason’s daddish habits, she settled down to start eating, knowing that this was probably the only meal she’d manage today.

Everything was going so marvellously to plan.

Nothing to worry about, so no point trying to create a problem out of thin air. If something was going to go wrong it would find a way to erupt soon enough.

After making a coffee she took it back upstairs and checked her personal mobile. Someone surely must have a problem by now, or at the very least a question only she could answer.

However, to her amazement, and deepening concern, it seemed no one did, so just after ten she made her own dash through the rain down to the village hall, wondering what she was going to find. It turned out to be the set and lights going up a treat, the chairs being carried out of storage by a couple of the locals and three ladies from the WI already on site unpacking their trestle tables ready to lay out the refreshments their members were delivering later.

‘I’m stunned,’ she told Mattie, who came to greet her with a pencil in her mouth and a curly wig in each hand.
Mattie was plump, plain and hopelessly awkward with people she didn’t know. With those that she did, like Alex and most of the cast, she felt confident enough to come out of her shell, and it never failed to touch Alex to see how happy it made her to be so fully involved.

With a frown, Mattie turned back towards the stage. ‘Isn’t it weird? I’m beginning to think this production is blessed by the Muses themselves,’ she declared.

‘Oh God,’ Alex shuddered, going after her as she started across the hall. ‘Don’t tempt fate, please. We’ve still got the rest of the day to get through yet. Does everyone know it’s a two o’clock call for the dress?’

‘I’m presuming so, but I’ve made a note to text reminders at eleven. Jason!’ she shouted. ‘Can the disco ball go any higher? The guys are going to walk into it where it is.’

‘It’s OK,’ he called back, ‘it’s not staying there.’ Catching Alex’s eye he gave her a wink and hoisted himself up on to the DJ stand where one of his helpers was rigging the flashing lights.

‘Any news from Scott?’ Alex asked Mattie, referring to the DJ who’d put himself in charge of the music.

‘Not yet,’ Mattie answered. ‘He’s not due for another hour, though. He won’t let us down.’

‘He’s only had one rehearsal,’ Alex reminded her anxiously, ‘and the timing has to be right or half the jokes are going to go flat on their faces.’

‘Tell you what, let’s worry when we have to,’ Mattie advised, and grabbing a rail of costumes she began wheeling it backstage.

By two o’clock everyone who was supposed to be in the hall was in the hall, and by three Alex, Mattie and Hailey were in the middle row of the audience seating, watching cast and crew take their opening positions. The only hitch they’d encountered so far was Scott getting stuck in traffic, but he was here now, all set-up and ready to roll.

Minutes later the opening scene was under way and it wasn’t long before those seeing the piece for the first time – Jason’s helpers, the WI ladies and the make-up artists hired in for the day – were starting to laugh. Alex might have heard the jokes a hundred times already, but they
could still make her smile. However, the cast, clearly energised by their costumes and mounting excitement, were giving every sign of going straight over the top. It was to be expected; it often happened during a dress run, so Alex simply made a note to remind them to bring it down for the actual show, and continued to revel in how much they were enjoying themselves.

During the break at the end of the first act she jumped up onstage to discuss a slightly different approach to the third scene of the second act with Johnny and Sarah, the two leads. Since it only involved them and they were always highly responsive to her suggestions, it took moments for them to give it a quick try-out and agree. Then using the rest of the break to dish out technical notes and lashings of praise, she seized the tea the stage manager had grabbed for her, and sank down between Hailey and Mattie again to watch the second part.

Though it suffered from a few late cues and a couple of missed lines, on the whole there was little for her to be concerned about. ‘Just don’t anyone get in a car, walk down the stairs or do anything at all to jeopardise your brilliant performances,’ she instructed the cast, who had gathered onstage for final notes. ‘That’s all for now. I don’t want to start fussing you with niggly stuff, and that’s all it would be. You know where it went wrong, so you know where to put it right. I’ll see you all back here this evening, when I honestly think we’re going to bring down the house.’

Loving their beaming faces as they started to mill off the stage, looking ludicrous, hilarious and downright huggable in the gender-swap costumes, she turned to Mattie and Hailey and as the three of them squeezed hands and jumped for joy, Jason flipped out his iPhone to capture the moment.

By seven thirty the audience was starting to fill the hall and to Alex’s delight, as she greeted them at the WI bar with laughs and warm embraces, it soon became clear that just about everyone was treating this as a special occasion, since they were all so smartly turned out. She herself was wearing a lemon silk shift dress with gold strappy sandals, while Jason, much to everyone’s amusement, had chosen
to don a tuxedo for the occasion. Completely over the top, of course, especially as he was working, but he looked so handsome in it that Alex experienced little shivers of pride every time she caught sight of him.

‘Don’t look now,’ a voice muttered in her ear, ‘Heather Hancock’s just turned up.’

Glancing, all intrigue, at Mattie, Alex leaned back against Salina, Mulgrove’s sensation-with-a-sewing-machine, who’d whipped up some amazing costumes for the production. ‘Who’s she with?’ she murmured, needing to be sure it wasn’t Gina.

‘Actually, she might be on her own,’ Salina replied, trying to be discreet about checking. ‘No, hang on, there’s a bloke with her, and let me tell you, he’s not half bad.’

Unable to stop herself, Alex stole a quick look over her shoulder, and almost choked on her drink as Heather smiled at her so sweetly sugar might have dripped from her lips.

After giving her a wave, Alex turned back to Mattie and Salina. ‘Did you see that?’ she murmured. ‘I think she likes me.’

As the others spluttered with laughter, Mattie said, ‘Brace yourself, she’s coming this way.’

Alex barely had time to turn round before Heather was upon her, all corkscrew red hair, cobalt-blue eyes and bored, I’m-too-good-for-this-amateur-stuff sort of smile. ‘Looks like a reasonable turnout,’ she commented, kissing air either side of Alex’s cheeks.

‘Even better than we hoped for,’ Alex confirmed. ‘And lovely that you could make it.’ Though they knew each other vaguely from school, since Heather was five years older they’d rarely mixed, at least not by intention. However, they’d occasionally found themselves at the same party, such as the one where Alex and Jason had met. Their paths had also clashed a couple of times more recently, firstly when Heather had managed to get some of her facts wrong in reports she’d done on one of Alex’s cases. Since this wasn’t something Alex was prepared to take lying down, she’d thought nothing of calling Heather up to put her straight and demand a correction. Heather had refused,
so Alex had contacted the editor, and got her way. The second time Heather had failed to cover herself in glory, at least in Alex’s eyes, was when she’d given a mean-spirited one-star rating to a new restaurant in town, which could hardly be blamed for the power cut that had taken out all the ovens on its first night. The Water de la Mer belonged to a friend of Alex’s, and consequently she’d fired off a hotly worded protest to the paper, which had found its way on to the letters page.

She didn’t imagine she and Heather Hancock were ever going to be best mates.

‘Can I introduce you to Greg Sanders,’ Heather was saying in her best throaty voice, as she turned to put a hand on her very handsome escort’s arm. ‘Greg, this is Alex Lake, the director of tonight’s
spectacle
.’

Wincing at the French pronunciation of the word which was clearly meant to belittle her production, Alex turned to Greg Sanders, who she knew was the
Gazette
’s sports correspondent. ‘Lovely to meet you,’ she said charmingly. ‘I hope you’re going to enjoy the evening.’

‘I’m actually really looking forward to it,’ he replied earnestly. ‘I’ve been hearing great things about it.’

Wanting to snigger at the flinty edges now cracking Heather’s smile, Alex was about to respond when Heather gave an odd little laugh.

‘He has a very unusual sense of humour,’ she declared. ‘It takes some getting used to. Anyway, we want to wish everyone good luck – oops, sorry, we’re not supposed to say that in the theatre, are we? But hey, this is a village hall, so does it count?’

Sensing Salina and Mattie bristling either side of her, Alex replied diplomatically, ‘Let’s just say we like to get into the spirit of things, and there are so many people here who’ve put so much into tonight it would be a pity to ...’

‘Oh, of course,’ Heather interrupted. ‘It’s a real community bash, I understand that. It’s why I’m here, of course. We want to do our bit at the
Gazette
to support the arts in our region.’

‘Well, I’m very happy about that, and Mattie’s sorted out some good seats for you, so if you’ll excuse me I’d better go and check on what’s happening backstage.’

Finding every bit as much chaos in the makeshift dressing rooms as she’d left ten minutes ago, she set about bolstering everyone’s confidence with a few slugs of Dutch courage and generally assuring them that nothing was going to go wrong.

Famous last words
, she was thinking with her fingers tightly crossed as the curtains slid apart for the first act to begin, and creeping quietly out into the hall she went to stand in the aisle with Mattie and Hailey. Spotting Jason watching her from the lighting gantry, she gave him an anxious little smile and loved him for the way he came back with such an assertive thumbs up.

To her dismay the first few minutes seemed to misfire badly, creating a sense of confusion in the room that made her wish she could shout cut and send the actors back to the top. She knew nerves were getting the better of them, and had actually expected it, but she’d hoped, prayed it wouldn’t happen.

Eventually, to her relief, they seemed to find the flow and as the audience got carried along with them, understanding at last what was going on – that blokes were having a taste of what it was like to be girls on a night out, and vice versa – the hilarity began to kick in. The first chat-up line, ‘Do you believe in love at first sight, or do I have to walk by again?’ though not original, was delivered so vampishly by Johnny as Jazzer (short for Jasmine), in his bouffant wig, mini-dress and five-inch heels, that he had to pause for almost a minute to wait for the laughter to die down.

The next showstopper came when binge-drinker Bonnie, played by Stuart Guard the local handyman, slurred his own chat-up line: ‘I’ve heard you’re better at sex than anyone, you just need a partner.’

Minutes later, the dance around handbags by four of the men virtually brought the house down. What made it even funnier was that the actors found themselves corpsing as they tried to play the next lines.

There was a story to the piece, naturally, which was part romance, part tragedy, but with so much laughter it wasn’t always easy to follow. Realising she should have prepared
for that, Alex whispered to Hailey that they might need to cut some of the one-liners for the next two shows, and was relieved when Hailey nodded agreement.

By the end of the evening everyone was clapping so hard that if Alex hadn’t signalled the stage manager to keep the curtains closed after the seventh encore, they might have been at it all night. OK, the audience was made up mostly of friends and family, but she’d noticed plenty of unfamiliar faces in the crowd too, and every one of them had seemed to be having a good time. Even Heather Hancock had managed to crack a smile or two, she’d noticed, though mostly she’d been assuming her important-critic pose, with an ear cocked towards the dialogue and a pen poised over her page.

‘I think you could call it a triumph,’ Jason murmured drily in Alex’s ear as he came to find her. ‘Come on, let’s get to the bar and meet your public before those scene-stealing actors get their kit on and start making with the limelight again.’

There turned out to be so many congratulations waiting to assail them, especially when the cast began drifting through, that it started to look doubtful they’d ever get out of the hall and across to the pub.

‘Alex? Is that you?’ a voice called from somewhere behind her.

Turning round, Alex gave a cry of surprise to see Maggie and Ron Fenn caught up in the crowd. ‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ she said, pushing through to greet them. ‘How lovely to see you.’

‘You too,’ Maggie said warmly. ‘I wondered if it was you when I saw your name in the programme. I can’t tell you how much we enjoyed it.’

‘That’s fantastic,’ Alex beamed, trying not to wince at Ron’s vicelike handshake, while glancing up at the man who was with them. He was tall and very striking, almost fierce in a way, she thought, with such intense black eyes and strong features she wasn’t sure whether he was handsome or not.

‘Alex, this is my older brother, Anthony,’ Maggie announced with a playful twinkle.

Realising from the tease in Maggie’s voice, not to mention the look of Anthony, that he was definitely the younger of the two, Alex said lightly as she shook his hand, ‘Aha, the fisherman with a liking for fast cars.’

Appearing surprised, and amused, he glanced at his sister as he said, ‘Has someone been talking about me?’