Martin, as the beanstalk, had been lying behind a plywood bush since before the show, and was starting to get bored and fidget, but thankfully he remembered his cue and scrabbled to his feet to the wonderment of the smallest children.
‘Miracle-Gro!’ roared Babs from the back to the whole row’s amusement. Oh hell, once hecklers got going, they’d only encourage each other. She spotted Roger Newcombe sniggering behind his hand. Trevor as Jack appeared in his Spiderman pyjamas to climb the beanstalk, which everyone loved.
‘This is lit!’ he announced at the sight of the beanstalk. ‘We’ve got to make a TikTok video.’
Again, Mr Daly had to hit a music cue, which was correct, except deafeningly loud. After everyone yelled, he pulled it back down to a level where the reedy voices of the few kids who actually knew all the words could be heard. The rest were clearly miming nervously. They shuffled through a few hip-hop moves, at which point Jack announced that he’d got half a million likes already. Which seemed unlikely, even to the Junior Infants.
Jack got a leg up from Martin to the upper level, which was supposed to be the castle in the sky, and hid himself in a cupboard before Rowley, the giant, made his entrance, dressed in a silver Elvis suit complete with cloak.
‘You’re not a giant!!’
‘Oh, yes I am!’ he replied, setting up his stepladder. ‘D’ye like me new ladder? I’m after nickin’ it from Woodie’s,’ he began. ‘I’d a terrible job hidin’ it under me jumper. I had to nick a sunlounger to hide it. But, listen, do yez ever get bored? I do get very bored up here in the clouds, and the Wi-Fi’s no good, even with me hotspot on, so I have to play me guitar. Do yez want to hear it?’
There was a chorus of ‘Yeaaaah,’ and a few rogue ‘No’s from the wits in the audience.
‘Right then, Ahmed, you’re on!’ he yelled.
Ahmed and his electric guitar struggled to make their entrance through an unfeasibly narrow door, and were accompanied by a wince-inducing splintering sound. Cassie gritted her teeth but, mercifully, the scenery wall held.
‘Hit it, Mr Daly .?.?.’
Mr Daly was clearly starting to enjoy the celebrity status his job was affording him and responded with a thumbs up.
For the first time ever the two boys tore through their routine without a single mistake, Ahmed daring to play his four chords with panache and Rowley rocking the vocals like someone four times his age. The audience were on their feet, dancing. Granda, on the verge of leaping out of his wheelchair, had his fist in the air. Cassie was horrified. If he collapsed, she’d be totally responsible.
The goose waddled on and announced she laid Gold American Express cards.
‘Would she lay one for me?’ yelled Babs from the back to hoots of laughter.
At the end, just as Jack was straining to cut down the tree, a group of younger boys and girls came out with placards, chanting ‘Save the beanstalk!’ and ‘We don’t want a has-bean-stalk!’ and tied a red ribbon around Martin. Then the people and the giant agreed to share the world together, so long as he could piggyback on their Wi-Fi, and they all started singing the old Three Dog Night rock anthem ‘Joy to the World’, with new words to include the beanstalk. The whole audience were on their feet with their arms in the air, swaying in unison.
Finally, the show came to a close with Sophie tearfully declaring how, now she had a Gold American Express card, they’d no longer be poor and destitute and she could shop online for the rest of her life.
Rowley’s granda was accepting compliments from all around and basking in reflected glory. Ahmed’s parents were glowing with pride at their son’s guitar playing after a year of lessons. Sophie’s parents quietly thanked Cassie, before loudly praising Marisha. But Cassie knew that, if you hadn’t done the work, then compliments felt meaningless. Something had changed for her, she realised: the kids’ success was her success. They’d way surpassed their own expectations, and that meant everything.
* * *
By 11 p.m., Rowley and Granda were delivered back home, and between herself and Rowley they lifted the frail body out of his wheelchair and onto the sofa. He’d be able to boast that he was at Rowley’s first gig, he announced. Though, looking at Granda, with his ancient veined hands clutching his blanket, Cassie was painfully aware that he mightn’t see too many more.
By midnight she finally hauled herself through the door of the apartment, which felt deafeningly quiet after the mayhem of the show. For an instant she felt the compulsion to text Finn and tell him how the show had been a blast, that the kids had been a revelation, but she realised, even before the thought had fully formed, that it was pointless. As she was staring at her phone, a notification buzzed and Philip’s name flashed up. It was a text from him:
I heard it was a triumph, big congrats!
Phil had obviously heard all the gossip from his pal Roger. She smiled.
TKS. What a rollercoaster! Airport 4.45 a.m. tomorrow .?.?. Today!
You’ll do it. Keep it simple.?
As she collapsed into bed, it registered briefly in her overstuffed brain that Philip had never once let her down.
Chapter 33
She was completely disorientated when the alarm went off. It was still pitch-dark and all she could remember was that she had to get moving. After a thirty-second shower, she gradually came to and was halfway through pulling on her clothes when her phone buzzed to say the taxi was at the door. It was 4.10 a.m. A flash of panic ran through her. Check everything: passport, money, phone, earphones, scripts. Anything else was replaceable.
Five minutes later she found herself and her little case pinned against the back seat of the taxi, speeding towards the airport in the pre-dawn light. She was conscious of the exhaustion dragging at her limbs, but adrenalin would have to substitute for her meagre hours of sleep. She glanced down at her outfit – scraggy jeans, runners, T-shirt – over which she’d thrown a lightweight trench coat which served in the early-morning chill but was liable to become roasting hot in the heatwave of central London.
Once at the airport and through to the departure gate, she’d settled herself into a corner of the café beside a plate-glass wall through which she gazed at the sun rising over a runway which shone with a pinky silver light. She’d ordered scrambled eggs and fresh orange juice, with the idea that high-protein, slow-release energy food was her wisest choice. Glancing around her, all she could see were dazed-looking people in business clothes sipping Starbucks and flicking on laptops. Along the walls lounged long-haul travellers in sandals and runners, with rucksacks or massive cases, making connecting flights, chugging energy drinks or the occasional pint of beer – good luck with that, she thought.
