Stage Mum Read Online Free

twenty-five years. Not since I’d failed my Grade 5 trumpet exam for the second time.
    A little over a month before our wedding, there was still a lot to organise. I wasn’t terribly bothered about things like clothes and flowers. Actually, I was so not bothered by flowers that it hadn’t occurred to me that we might need or want some. Clothes were slightly more of a concern. The feeling of sartorial inadequacy that thrums constantly at the edge of my consciousness was gradually gaining volume and would, I knew, at some point – probably when it was too late to do anything about it – erupt into full-blown neurosis. But I was way behind Lilli, who was threatening to spontaneously combust over Laurie’s reluctance to invest in a new outfit. She had a point: his attachment to the three pairs of well-worn Clark’s lace-ups that comprised his entire shoe collection did seem slightly unnatural, and his trouser-knees were universally shiny. ‘I’m an ascetic,’ he lamented. ‘Or I used to be. All I ever needed was one pair of yoga pants and a prayer mat.’ Which was true. Before becoming a children’s entertainer (how we met), my husband-to-be used to travel the world practising and teaching Sufi meditation, dance and Middle Eastern drumming.
    I was more concerned that we hadn’t yet sent out the invitations, or even decided exactly who we were going to invite. What was the point of ordering 250 smoked salmon bagels if there was no one to eat them? After a bit of toing and froing between Laurie and me, my dad and Lilli – Dora had already invited about ten of her closest friends (including a couple of boys) to be bridesmaids – we settled on a guest list long enough to include everyone who had to be invited and most of the people we wanted to be there. We just about managed to keep it short enough to ensure that none of the older generation would be trampled in the post-ceremony scramble for a cup of tea (and, obviously, a bagel).
    On that guest list was the solution to our audition music problem: Ruth Franks, jazz-singer-turned-children’s-music-teacher – a lifelong family friend of Laurie’s.
    Two weeks before her recall – four before our wedding – we dropped Dora off at Ruth’s flat with sheet music, my minidisc recorder complete with blank disc and some garbled instructions on how to use it and what to use it for. Handily, Ruth lives just round the corner from the rabbi who was going to officiate at our wedding. We took the opportunity to visit his house with a packet of kosher biscuits, so we could chat about the service and discuss those delicate matters that needed raising and, more critically, avoiding in his speech.
    An hour and a half later, marginally wiser and only slightly confused (did we get the things that needed raising and avoiding the right way round?), we were back at Ruth’s. Dora had had a fantastic time, and Ruth had recorded the melodies she needed to learn. ‘How did she do?’ I asked.
    ‘She’s pitch-perfect,’ said Ruth. ‘She might be exactly what they’re looking for.’
    ‘But she’s got no experience, and with all those stage school kids out there …’
    ‘They’re probably not looking for stage school kids.’
    I thought she was wrong. I was certain they’d be after stage school moppets, old pros by the age of seven, who could cry convincingly on cue like Shirley Temple, sing like Cyndi Lauper, dance like very small versions of Ginger Rogers and all of whom would have been genetically modified using DNA carefully extracted from Jenny Agutter.
    I copied each of Dora’s four tunes three times on to a cassette tape, and left her to practise, only interfering occasionally. Or, to be more accurate, only when I couldn’t help myself, which was quite often. When I wasn’t annoying her, she worked hard to learn the songs, and by a couple of days before the audition had mastered all but the bottom part of ‘The Sound of Music’. I figured this didn’t matter too