I See You(35)

Melissa stands up. ‘I think that’s my cue to get going. Well done on getting the part, Katie.’ She throws me a stern look that means Go easy on her, and leaves us.

‘What money, Katie?’ I insist.

She puts a bowl of soup in the microwave and presses the reheat button. ‘We split the costs of rehearsal space, that’s all. It’s a cooperative.’

‘It’s a rip-off.’

‘You know nothing about how theatre works, Mum!’

We’re both shouting now, so intent on making our points that we don’t hear the key in the front door that means Simon is home early, as he has been every day this week, since I fell ill.

‘You’re feeling better, then?’ he says, when I notice him leaning in the doorway, a look of resigned amusement on his face.

‘A bit,’ I say sheepishly. Katie puts her soup on a tray, to eat in her room. ‘What time is Isaac picking you up?’

‘Five. I’m not inviting him in, if you’re going to have a go about the profit-share.’

‘I won’t, I promise. I just want to meet him.’

‘I bought something for you,’ Simon says. He hands her a plastic carrier bag with something small and hard inside. Katie puts down her tray to open it. It’s an attack alarm – the sort that lets off an air-raid-type siren when you pull out the pin. ‘They were selling them at the corner shop. I don’t know if they’re any good, but I thought you could carry it when you’re walking home from the Tube.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. I know he’s bought it for my peace of mind, really, rather than for Katie’s. To make me feel better about her being out so late. I try and redeem myself for my earlier outburst. ‘When do tickets for Twelfth Night go on sale, love? Because we’ll be in the front row, won’t we, Simon?’

‘Absolutely.’

He means it, and not only because it’s Katie. Simon likes classical music, and theatre, and obscure jazz concerts in tucked-away places. He was amazed I’d never seen The Mousetrap; took me to see it and kept turning to look at me, to check I was enjoying it. It was okay, I suppose, but I preferred Mamma Mia.

‘I’m not sure. I’ll find out. Thank you.’ This, she directs at Simon, in whom I think she sees something of a kindred spirit. Last night he was testing her on her lines, the two of them breaking off to debate the imagery apparent in the text.

‘You see how she personifies “Disguise”, and calls it a “Wickedness”?’ Simon was saying.

‘Yes! And even at the end no one’s identity is really clear.’

I caught Justin’s eye; a rare conspiratorial moment between the two of us.

On our first date Simon told me he wanted to be a writer.

‘But that’s what you already do, isn’t it?’ I was confused. He’d introduced himself as a journalist when we met.

He shook his head dismissively. ‘That’s not proper writing; it’s just content. I want to write books.’

‘So do it.’

‘I will one day,’ he told me, ‘when I have time.’

For Christmas that year I bought him a Moleskine notebook; thick creamy pages, bound in soft brown leather. ‘For your book,’ I said shyly. We’d only been together for a few weeks, and I’d spent days agonising over what I could get him. He looked at me like I’d given him the moon.

‘It wasn’t the notebook,’ he told me, more than a year later, when he had moved in and was halfway through the first draft of his book. ‘It was the fact you believed in me.’

Katie’s jumpy. She’s still wearing the skinny jeans and sequinned sweatshirt outfit – somehow managing to look both casual and glamorous at the same time – but she’s added dark red lipstick and a sweep of thick black eyeliner, curving up towards the outside of her eyebrows like wings.

‘Fifteen minutes,’ she hisses at me, when the doorbell rings, ‘then we’re going.’ Justin’s still at the café, and Simon and I are in the lounge, which I’ve hastily tidied up.

I hear low voices in the hall and wonder what Katie’s telling her new boyfriend-slash-director. Sorry about my mum, probably. They come into the lounge and Simon stands up. I can see immediately what Katie finds attractive. Isaac is tall, with smooth olive skin and jet-black hair, worn longer on top than underneath. His eyes are the darkest of brown, and the V-neck T-shirt under his leather jacket hints at a well-defined chest. In short, Isaac is gorgeous.

He’s also at least thirty.

I realise my mouth has fallen open and I turn it into a ‘hello’.

‘It’s good to meet you, Mrs Walker. You’ve got a very talented daughter.’

‘Mum thinks I should be a secretary.’

I glare at Katie. ‘I suggested you did a secretarial course. As something to fall back on.’

‘Wise advice,’ Isaac says.

‘You think?’ Katie says, incredulously.

‘It’s a tough industry, and cuts to Arts funding means it’s only going to get tougher.’

‘Well, maybe I’ll give it some more thought.’

I turn my snort of surprise into a cough. Katie gives me a sharp look.

Isaac shakes hands with Simon, who offers him a beer. He declines, on the basis that he’s driving, and I think that he at least has that in his favour. He and Katie sit on the sofa, a respectable distance between them, and I look for signs that, in the brief time since they met, they’ve become more than just director and actor. But there are no accidental-on-purpose touches, and I wonder if Katie’s hero-worship is just a one-way crush. I hope she’s not going to get hurt.