Page 91 of Last Christmas in London

‘One night, when I was about thirteen or so, I finally plucked up the courage to ask the stage manager, Mr Flowers his name was, if I could sit and watch the show from the wings. He said yes, so long as I didn’t move and didn’t get in anyone’s way. And that evening I fell in love.’ The timbre of Pim’s voice changed, softening to a low hum as she took us all back to that moment of her childhood.

‘I begged my mother to allow me the chance to audition for the theatre company, for any role, I didn’t care. Bit-parts, ensemble, non-speaking roles, I just wanted to be on the stage. And eventually, after a year or so, my mother allowed it. But, as you all might be able to guess – though I did get the bit-parts and the ensemble, non-speaking roles – I didn’t stick to those roles. On the night I’d improvise, I’d add a flourish here or a delayed gasp there. On occasion I’d find a way to add in a line or throw in a speaking part, just to draw the audience’s eyes to me. Oh, I got into so much trouble with the cast and crew.’

Everyone laughed at her mischievous grin.

‘When I was sixteen and performing at another theatre, as my mother’s local wouldn’t have me any more for all my rule-breaking, a casting agent finally saw me and did the one thing I always hoped one would. They offered me representation.’

She paused for a moment and corrected her posture. Emily didn’t interrupt or add in any vocal cues. This was Pim’s show and Pim’s moment to shine.

‘I ran away,’ she said eventually, to a slight gasp of the audience. ‘My family would never have allowed me to move so far away to work, so I made the decision and did it myself. I ran away to London like a modern-day Dick Whittington to audition for a company, and I made it. I got a job with a radio company, performing as a voice actress in all the childish roles. I had a much lighter voice then, you see, before all the cigarettes of the late twentieth century ruined it for me.’

The audience laughed.

‘I had that job and a few other parts for a few years before I started to make the transition to film and TV. I had a proper agent by then and I started meeting just about anyone that would allow me in the room, and even some that wouldn’t allow me.’ She paused and scratched her nose, looking out to the wings for just half a glance and I smiled at her, as encouragingly as I could. She looked away.

‘You know, Emily,’ she began, ‘this industry is a hard one, back then and now, and the difficulties haven’t increased or decreased. They’ve just remained the same – hard. And the solution for getting through it is the same as well. You need help,’ she said simply. ‘I’ve had a lot of help throughout my career. Those vaudevillians who let me watch their warm-ups, that first stage manager, Mr Flowers, the casting agent, the radio company, the many actors and actresses I met along the way.’ She paused for a moment and smiled widely. ‘To even now, my darling assistant, Evie, who gets me from pillar to post.’

Alison’s grip around my hand tightened and I felt the tears from earlier returning.

‘I love working with Evie,’ Pim said with a laugh, surpris-ing me so much I think I forgot to breathe. ‘She never lets her inner saboteur get a speaking role in her life, and she tells me exactly how it is, even when I’m being a right pain in the behind,’ Pim joked, and the audience laughed too, allowing me a chance to release a sob of shock and gratefulness from inside me. ‘I never got a chance to say thank you to many of the people that helped me,’ Pim continued. ‘But I can say thank you to Evie. So…’ She turned to the wings and nodded in my direction. ‘Thank you, Evie.’

A round of applause began from the audience, started no doubt by Megan and Josh, and soon the whole auditorium was clapping as well, alongside Emily and Pim, who joined in. Alison released my hand for a moment to clap, and I couldn’t do anything but stand there and sob, grinning from ear to ear, my heartbeat thumping in my ears to the beat of the applause.

It only lasted a few seconds, but it was probably the best moment of my life.

Alison wrapped her arm around my shoulder, and I tried desperately to pull myself together.

‘Right, now back to me,’ Pim said wickedly, before quickly laughing and adding with dramatic flair, ‘I’m just kidding,’ so that the audience knew to laugh with her.

Chapter 28

The hours after the show were a blur of prosecco, Pimm’s, and clinking of glasses. Pim was a rip-roaring success, with so much praise and calls for her time that I barely got a few minutes with her before Josh and Megan bundled me into a taxi to Megan’s flat to meet Bob, who had arrived earlier to babysit Alfie, and who had volunteered to drive us all down to Kent after the event.

It was Christmas Eve, after all; there were no trains running this late.

‘First pay the car tax,’ Bob demanded, when we arrived, opening his arms as Josh attempted to fit his suitcase of just Christmas jumpers into Bob’s twenty-year-old Mazda.

‘That’s not going to fit,’ Megan insisted, watching on with disinterest as she strapped Alfie into his car seat.

‘How are you? How’d the event go?’ Bob asked, never once letting me actually answer before he asked the next question. ‘Do you want the heating on? I’ve just installed a CD player. Do you want me to put on Band Aid?’

It was a bit of a squeeze in the back, with Alfie in the baby seat and Josh and me pressed together like sardines – of course Megan had bagged the front seat – but we made it to Kent eventually, with only a few bruises from speed bumps and one tiny kerb crawl.

‘Your mum will be asleep,’ Bob said, taking one look at the mess of suitcases and squashed overnight bags in his boot before heading inside without offering to help. ‘She’s getting up at five to baste the turkey.’

‘What time’s lunch?’ Josh asked.

‘Two,’ Megan and I said in unison, and the first ounce of Christmas Eve excitement began to glow in my midriff.

Christmas Eve could be the most magical day of the year, I decided. Christmas Day’s wonderful – or so I’d heard – but the possibility you feel on Christmas Eve is overwhelming. Especially when surrounded by loved ones.

‘I’m going to bed as well,’ I told Josh and Megan, who looked surprised that I didn’t want to stay up for yet another toast to my successful event with Pim. But I wanted to get tucked up in the Christmas pyjamas I knew Denise would have laid out on my bed, with a hot water bottle and a stupidly sugary hot chocolate from Bob, knowing that the presents would be pulled from the garage by Denise at 6.00 a.m. – after she basted the turkey – and would be arranged under the tree by Bob before we rose the following morning.

Despite years of feeling an unspoken sense of anxiety around Christmas, around being the foster daughter in a happy family, who should always strive to be a good girl and not an inconvenience, I realised that I was never made to feel that way. I kept those feelings alive, while Denise and Bob only ever kept the traditions. Traditions I was and, still was, a part of.

I knew why that still felt complicated, and letting myself enjoy it felt a bit like tempting fate, or betraying a younger version of myself who was trying to keep her mother’s memory alive. But loving Denise and Bob would never take that away, it never had. Because, however old we got, the traditions of a family Christmas lived on, because they were my family. I just had to let go of how they became my family, and trust that they were.

They’d never let me down yet. And I doubted they ever would.