Instead, we check in and then leave our bags to be taken up to Shelby’s rooms. Lucas is tense as we walk the few hundred metres to the stage door of the theatre and I’m not much better. At the reception we ask for Shelby and are told to wait. We stand in a narrow corridor that’s painted beige and wait, then we wait a bit more. There’s nowhere to sit and we’re in the way. Every time a performer comes in or out, we have to jiggle round them.
Lucas is getting agitated. ‘He’s such a fucker,’ he mutters.
‘This is his job,’ I remind Lucas. ‘He’s not keeping us waiting on purpose.’
I get a murderous look.
Another twenty minutes later and Shelby finally comes out, all beaming smiles and open arms.
Lucas glowers darkly.
Oblivious, Shelby kisses me and slaps Lucas on the back. ‘Good to see you both. The place is madness tonight. Utter madness! The local BBC television station have sent a crew down to interview us. It should have started half an hour ago, but I’m still waiting. Can you forgive me?’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Do what you have to do.’
‘I’d booked a table at a nice Tex-Mex place further down the street. Do you want to head off there and I’ll join you when I can?’
‘How long do you think you’ll be?’
‘Not much longer.’ Shelby glances over his shoulder. ‘Five, ten minutes?’
‘We’ll wait. It’s not a problem.’
‘I’ll be back as soon as I can. Promise.’ He dashes off before I can say anything else.
Lucas rolls his eyes at me.
‘Say nothing,’ I warn him. Another gaggle of performers squeezes past us. ‘Shall we wait outside?’
‘It’s December and I’m wearing a shirt.’
‘You didn’t think to bring a coat?’
‘I assumed I’d be sitting in a theatre all night.’
Probably quite rightly.
In the event, it’s a good forty-five minutes before Shelby resurfaces. He does, however, look flushed and excited.
‘It went well?’
‘Brilliantly.’ Then he grimaces at me. ‘Problem is, now I’m tight for time. I need to be in make-up in a few minutes. Dinner is off the cards, I’m afraid. It’s not long before the show starts. Do you two want to grab a sandwich or something in the foyer and then we can have dinner afterwards?’
I dread to think what time that will be. Matt is staying over at the van, but I’ll still need to be up early and away after breakfast. I don’t want him holding the fort alone. We’ve got students in tomorrow, so I want to be back as soon as I can. I’m assuming that Shelby can lie in until lunchtime and hasn’t really considered this.
‘Yes, that’ll be fine,’ I say.
‘I hadn’t planned it like this.’ He does look terribly apologetic. ‘I’ll make it up to you.’
He thrusts two tickets into my hand and dashes off again. I stare after him.
‘How many times have I heard that?’ Lucas grumbles. ‘This is typical of my father. All that fuss about us coming and he doesn’t care if we’re here or not.’
But I’m trying to keep the peace between them, so I say nothing. If we’d known that Shelby was going to be so delayed we could have gone round the Christmas market or had dinner. A lesson learned.
‘Come on then. There’s not much time before the show starts. We’ll go round to the front and see what we can find.’
‘I must remind you,’ Lucas says, drily. ‘That I am absolutely doing this under sufferance.’
His dad being late isn’t a great start – I’ll give Lucas that – but he’d better brace himself as I fear that the worst is yet to come.
Chapter Fifty
There are no sandwiches to be had in the foyer, or any other substantial snacks. They have plenty of chocolate, but Lucas can’t find anything that’s vegan, so he sulks a bit more. If it weren’t for Lucas’s censure, one of those large bags of Maltesers – vegan or not – would be mine. All mine.
In fairness, when the show starts it’s very funny. It’s not really my thing, nor Lucas’s, yet, despite his best efforts not to, I catch him smiling a few times. There’s no doubt that Shelby is very good. He plays the villain, Nebuchadnezzar, so well. In fact, he’s probably doing too convincing a job of being a baddie.
I think again how different his world is to mine. He’s in his element up there in front of an audience, whereas I’m not even that comfortable being in the audience. I don’t like crowds or being confined to a chair for two hours. I’d much rather be in my wellies striding across the fields.
But both Lucas and I get through it with something approaching aplomb. I’m proud of Shelby. He’s a good actor, probably wasted in this role. When it’s over we stand and cheer along with the rest of them. Well, I do. Lucas sits on his hands.
We leave the theatre and head round to the stage door.
‘That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back,’ Lucas complains.
‘Didn’t you enjoy that just a little bit?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s an utterly crass and pointless art form.’
‘Don’t tell your dad that. Smile sweetly and tell him he was wonderful.’ I look at him with my most serious face on. ‘You’ll need him on side when we tell him your news.’
Lucas sighs heavily.
We wait outside the stage door, Lucas shivering in the cold, and he’s almost turned to ice by the time Shelby sweeps out. It’s a good half an hour before he joins us. I stifle a hearty yawn as it’s approaching ten-thirty and I was up at the crack of dawn.
Magnanimously, Shelby signs autographs for the hardy fans who have waited in the bitter cold alongside us. When they’re satisfied and the crowd thins out, eventually, he’s ours. He takes my hands. ‘Did you enjoy the show?’
‘It was marvellous,’ I gush. ‘You were magnificent.’ And he was. I dig Lucas in the ribs.
‘Excellent,’ he mutters. ‘You aced it.’
Shelby is flying high on adrenaline. ‘There’s a bit of a get-together at a bar down the road. Caroline Curtis – Princess Jasmine – has a birthday party. I said we’d go along for just one drink. It would be rude of me not to.’
This is the time we need to go back to the hotel and sit quietly with Shelby, but it seems like a bad idea at the moment. I look at Lucas and he shrugs.
‘OK.’
I’m not sure that we actually have much choice. Party, it is.
So we tramp along beside Shelby as we head to the bar, while he waxes lyrical about the performance and what happened on his side of the curtain. It’s so alien to me and I should find it exciting, shouldn’t I? But half of the time I’ve no idea what or who he’s talking about.
We reach our destination, Club Escape, and open the door to a crush of people and bright lights. Definitely a place I’d be happy to escape from. Shelby and I appear to be the only ones inside who are over thirty. Lucas cheers up considerably and, thankfully, as he’s with Shelby, he’s nodded through rather than being asked for ID at the door.