‘Is that your famous chicken soup? Is there any left?’
‘Loads. So, I’ve been hearing about Isaac …’ She emphasises the vowels in his name, and Katie looks at me suspiciously. I say nothing.
‘He’s a great director,’ Katie says primly. We wait, but she won’t be drawn.
‘And dare I ask about the money?’ Melissa says, ever the businesswoman. ‘I know acting isn’t the most lucrative of professions, but will it at least cover your outgoings?’
Katie’s pause tells me everything I need to know.
‘Oh, Katie, I thought this was an actual job!’
‘It is a job. We’ll get paid after the run, once the ticket revenue’s in and the bills have been paid.’
‘So it’s a profit-share?’ Melissa says.
‘Exactly.’
‘And what if there’s no profit?’ I say.
Katie rounds on me. ‘There you go again! Why don’t you just tell me I’m shit, Mum? That no one will come and see it, and we’ll all lose our money—’ She stops, but it’s too late.
‘Lose what money? A profit-share I can understand – to a point – but please tell me you haven’t actually given money to some bloke you’ve only just met!’
Melissa stands up. ‘I think that’s my cue to get going. Well done on getting the part, Katie.’ She throws me a stern look that means Go easy on her, and leaves us.
‘What money, Katie?’ I insist.
She puts a bowl of soup in the microwave and presses the reheat button. ‘We split the costs of rehearsal space, that’s all. It’s a cooperative.’
‘It’s a rip-off.’
‘You know nothing about how theatre works, Mum!’
We’re both shouting now, so intent on making our points that we don’t hear the key in the front door that means Simon is home early, as he has been every day this week, since I fell ill.
‘You’re feeling better, then?’ he says, when I notice him leaning in the doorway, a look of resigned amusement on his face.
‘A bit,’ I say sheepishly. Katie puts her soup on a tray, to eat in her room. ‘What time is Isaac picking you up?’
‘Five. I’m not inviting him in, if you’re going to have a go about the profit-share.’
‘I won’t, I promise. I just want to meet him.’
‘I bought something for you,’ Simon says. He hands her a plastic carrier bag with something small and hard inside. Katie puts down her tray to open it. It’s an attack alarm – the sort that lets off an air-raid-type siren when you pull out the pin. ‘They were selling them at the corner shop. I don’t know if they’re any good, but I thought you could carry it when you’re walking home from the Tube.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. I know he’s bought it for my peace of mind, really, rather than for Katie’s. To make me feel better about her being out so late. I try and redeem myself for my earlier outburst. ‘When do tickets for Twelfth Night go on sale, love? Because we’ll be in the front row, won’t we, Simon?’
‘Absolutely.’
He means it, and not only because it’s Katie. Simon likes classical music, and theatre, and obscure jazz concerts in tucked-away places. He was amazed I’d never seen The Mousetrap; took me to see it and kept turning to look at me, to check I was enjoying it. It was okay, I suppose, but I preferred Mamma Mia.
‘I’m not sure. I’ll find out. Thank you.’ This, she directs at Simon, in whom I think she sees something of a kindred spirit. Last night he was testing her on her lines, the two of them breaking off to debate the imagery apparent in the text.
‘You see how she personifies “Disguise”, and calls it a “Wickedness”?’ Simon was saying.
‘Yes! And even at the end no one’s identity is really clear.’
I caught Justin’s eye; a rare conspiratorial moment between the two of us.
On our first date Simon told me he wanted to be a writer.
‘But that’s what you already do, isn’t it?’ I was confused. He’d introduced himself as a journalist when we met.
He shook his head dismissively. ‘That’s not proper writing; it’s just content. I want to write books.’
‘So do it.’
‘I will one day,’ he told me, ‘when I have time.’
For Christmas that year I bought him a Moleskine notebook; thick creamy pages, bound in soft brown leather. ‘For your book,’ I said shyly. We’d only been together for a few weeks, and I’d spent days agonising over what I could get him. He looked at me like I’d given him the moon.
‘It wasn’t the notebook,’ he told me, more than a year later, when he had moved in and was halfway through the first draft of his book. ‘It was the fact you believed in me.’