Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Acknowledgements
June 1999
There’s no way on earth I’m going to get this part.
For starters, the show is called The Sound of ‘Music’, and I’m about as musical as a rusty tin opener. Seriously, I can barely hold a tune. If the director and casting agent suddenly have a drastic change of heart, and decide instead to start auditioning the hundred-odd kids gathered here this afternoon for a brand-new musical called The Sound of Rusty Tin Openers … well, then I’ll be a shoo-in. Until then, though, I’d estimate my chances of winning the role of Louisa Von Trapp at roughly zero.
Oh, and for another thing, all the other girls here at the New Wimbledon Theatre with the label ‘LOUISA’ stuck to their chests are petite, blonde, and cute-as-a-button pretty.
Whereas I’m a bit gangly, my hair is the colour of double espresso, and even though I don’t think I should be walking about with a paper bag on my head, cute-as-a-button prettiness isn’t really my thing.
In fact, surely the director and casting agent are going to seriously question why I’m here at all.
It’s a question with a pretty straightforward answer, though: my mother.
And here she is now, bustling back over towards me and my sister Cass, fresh from five minutes of wrangling with the casting director’s assistant.
‘Did it!’ Mum practically yells, with the sort of triumphant fist-clutch Tim Henman is always doing on Wimbledon’s Centre Court, just a mile down the road from here, shortly before he’s knocked out of the tournament for another year.
‘Mum! Can’t you be a bit quieter?’
I mean, it’s embarrassing enough that she forced me and Cass to come to the auditions in matching, egg-yolk yellow dirndls (though actually Cass, a cute eight-year-old, looks rather fetching in hers, whereas I, an awkward thirteen-year-old, look like a badly stuffed rag doll, in a much smaller rag doll’s dress, after eating an entire deep-pan pizza); but now she’s drawing even more attention to the three of us.
‘They’ve agreed to move your audition half an hour earlier, Cass,’ Mum is going on, ignoring me, ‘because of the family emergency we have to get to.’
‘What family emergency?’ asks Cass.
‘You know. The important one,’ Mum fibs. ‘Anyway,’ she adds, lowering her voice so that only Cass and I can hear her, ‘the point is that it’ll get you in to audition ahead of the youngest Walker girl, so I’d be perfectly happy to say your grandparents were on fire if it did the trick.’
‘The youngest Walker girl’ is Mum and Cass’s nemesis: a triple-threat nine-year-old (acting, singing and dancing) from an apparently unending line of showbiz Walkers. She has pipped Cass to the post for three big roles lately: Annie in the Aylesbury Waterside production of Annie, Cosette in a production of Les Mis at the Secombe Theatre in Sutton, and, most gallingly of all, Tevye’s youngest daughter Bielke in a nationwide-touring revival of Fiddler on the Roof. In fact, she’s over in the far corner of the lobby right now, practising some stunning-sounding arpeggios, and occasionally, for no terribly good reason at all, sinking into an impressive splits. (I don’t know if the splits are required in The Sound of Music, I don’t actually remember any in the Julie Andrews movie version, but it’s certainly doing a good job of psyching out all the other prospective Brigittas.) The last display of the splits caused three of them to burst into simultaneous tears and flee the auditions before their names were even called. Though it did earn the youngest Walker girl a pretty fierce telling-off from her older sister, another of the showbiz Walkers, who’s evidently here for the part of Louisa, and looking almost as unenthusiastic about it as I am.
‘They just need a chance to see you before they see her, darling,’ Mum is telling Cass, ‘and that part is yours. Now, do you need me to run through the words to the goatherd song again, or do you think you’ve got it now?’
‘I’ve got it, Mum!’ Cass may be a full five years younger than me, but she’s got roughly five times my chutzpah. ‘For God’s sake. Anyway, if I forget any of the main words, I’ll just skip as fast as possible to the Star Wars bit.’
Mum and I both stare at her, in confusion.
‘You know, the bits where I sing Yoda Yoda Yoda Yoda … I don’t understand, though,’ Cass adds, plaintively, ‘what Yoda has to do with The Sound of Music at all.’
I think I need a breath of fresh air.
‘Where are you going?’ Mum shrieks, as I reach across to one of the orange plastic chairs for my rucksack. ‘What about your audition?’
‘It’s not until ten past three, Mum. That’s three and a half hours away. Anyway, I thought I might go and find a quiet place to rehearse.’
‘Finding a quiet place to rehearse’ often means I get left in peace for a while, without Mum coming and nagging me to help Cass learn lines for whatever audition or show is currently on the schedule, or without Cass coming and nagging me to give her a makeover so she looks like Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Honestly, if I was rehearsing as much as I claim I am, I’d probably be acing it at this audition, exactly like one of the showbiz Walkers.
‘That’s probably a good idea,’ Mum agrees, because even if she must know there’s no chance of me getting this part, at least if I’m well rehearsed I won’t actually embarrass her. ‘Oh, and Libby …’ She’s reaching into her handbag for her mobile phone, and handing it over to me. ‘Please will you ring your father and remind him he’s picking you up from here at four o’clock, not home. I’ve already left him two voicemails, and I’m not calling him again. Why he thinks I’ve nothing better to do with my time than chase around after him trying to convince him to keep his rare appointments with his only daughter, I don’t know.’
‘He’s been busy,’ I tell her, ‘with the book.’
‘And the Pope,’ Mum replies, ‘is Catholic.’
Which means it’s time for me to get out of here, before Mum can start on about Dad’s book again. And the one thing this hideous waiting room really needs is Mum working herself up about Dad in a manner that would make you think they’d been divorced for only ten minutes instead of almost ten years.
I mean, she only divorced Cass’s father Michael six months ago, but she manages to remain calm – pleasant, even – throughout all her dealings with him.
‘OK, OK,’ I say, already backing towards the doors that lead to the main auditorium. ‘I’ll see you a bit later. Break a leg in there, Cass.’
But Cass has started to spritz her face with an Evian water spray and isn’t paying any attention.
I already know the auditorium at the New Wimbledon Theatre pretty well, from way too many days spent waiting around here last November while Cass was rehearsing Babes in the Wood, the festive season pantomime.
It’s so massive
