life. I mean, you don’t really want to do that, do you? I have a feeling that, in real life, you’d like to do well.’ He looked straight at Daniel. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ Daniel shrugged uncomfortably.
‘I dunno,’ he muttered.
‘The thing to remember,’ said Jonathan, ‘is that this scholarship is for you, not your mother. If you’d like to do well in it, you might as well try as hard as you can. It would be a shame if you did badly on purpose, just to spite Mum.’
‘We’re not allowed to call her Mum,’ muttered Daniel. ‘We have to say Mummy. She says Mum’s common.’ Jonathan’s mouth twitched.
‘Well, anyway,’ he said, ‘I’d hate to see you turning into an alcoholic because of your mother.’ Daniel gave an unwilling giggle. ‘I’ll be seeing quite a lot of you over the next few weeks,’ added Jonathan, ‘and if ever I smell wine on your breath, or whisky—’
‘I hate whisky,’ said Daniel. ‘Yuck.’
‘Or Tia Maria,’ said Jonathan, ‘or Baby Cham—’ Daniel giggled again. ‘I’ll be right round to tell your mother,’ Jonathan finished. He looked seriously at Daniel. ‘I mean it.’
‘OK,’ muttered Daniel. ‘Thanks.’ He looked up and smiled at Jonathan. ‘Thanks a lot.’
‘And don’t worry,’ said Jonathan, going over and putting on the kettle again. ‘Coaching won’t be so bad. I’m quite human, really. We’ll have a good time.’ He smiled at Daniel. ‘Honest.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Piers’s audition for Summer Street was in the first week of January. Ginny waved him off on the early train to London, then stood on the platform, staring down the tracks, hugging herself in the cold and hoping. She allowed herself a brief mental picture of him arriving back that evening, throwing open the door of the carriage, and, with shining, triumphant eyes, scooping her up in his arms, shouting, ‘I got the part!’
A stab of agonized hope ran through her, and for a moment she stood, transfixed by the vision; two tears trembling on her lower lids. Then, as they fell, she turned briskly away and began walking out of the station. She was, she realized, even more tense about this audition than she’d thought she was. They had had a strained Christmas at her parents’ house in Buckinghamshire, with Piers increasingly edgy, and her mother following Ginny about the house with questioning, criticizing eyes. The reason for her criticism had become clear late on Christmas Eve, when she had suddenly launched into a catalogue of the daughters of her acquaintances who had, in recent months, provided their mothers with grandchildren, and then, almost in the same breath, asked Piers what work he had lined up for the next year.
Ginny would have loved it if he could have told her parents that everything was OK; that a big part was in the offing; that they would soon have enough money for five children. But Piers was insistent that they should keep the audition a secret from them.
‘If I tell them I’m going for the part, and don’t get it,’ he said, ‘I’ll never hear the end of it. It’ll be a nightmare.’ Which Ginny had to admit was quite true. But, then, he was going to get it. He had to get it.
As she turned into Russell Street, she imagined him in the train, perhaps going over the script for a final time; muttering the lines under his breath. Not that he needed to. They both knew that cursed script backwards by now. They all did. She and Duncan, and even little Alice, had been through it so many times, they could say the lines in their sleep. Duncan’s game of declaiming a phrase and seeing who could carry on had been gradually honed down until now he merely had to give one word, and the rest of them would all chime in with the rest of the sentence. In the end they’d had to declare a veto on it.
He couldn’t have done more preparation. Ginny muttered to herself as she went up the path, trying to build a sense of reassurance. He’d done everything he could. But then, it wasn’t the preparation that would get him the job. It was whether they liked him.
She pushed open the front door, and stood in the gloomy hall, feeling suddenly stranded. Now that it was happening, now that Piers was actually on his way to the audition, she seemed to have lost her focus. There was nothing she could do; no help she could give him. He was on his own.
And