Throughout the day, every time I came out of a door it seemed that Dr. Lightowler was there looking at me. Not blinking and then twitching. I said to the others, “I’d better not wear anything brown, she might think I’m a shrew.”

I’m trying to make a joke about it, but it’s not nice.

At break, I got a message to go and see Sidone.

When I went into her office, she was lying on her chaise longue in harem trousers, smoking a hubbly-bubbly. She said, “I know it’s a filthy habit, but I picked it up in Marrakesh when we were on tour with Carry On Matron and well . . . that’s another story. Pull up some cushions.”

I piled up some cushions and sat on the floor at her feet.

“So, Miss Casey, you had a checkered beginning with us here at Dother Hall, and to be quite truthful it was only because Ms. Fox says you are an extraordinary presence and bound to be quite tall that we kept you on. Not everyone thought it a good idea. This is a hard business and in order to survive you have to be skillful. Dr. Lightowler specially came to talk to me about your lunchtime performance.”

Oh no. She’d actually done it.

Sidone adjusted her turban.

“Dr. Lightowler says that she thinks that you have a great talent for broad comedy.”

What? Great talent?

Had I misjudged Owly?

Sidone continued, “Yes, we had an interesting chat. She reminded me of when you were the horse in the Mummers play at The Blind Pig, and then your hilarious horse in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And, of course, your duet on Friday. Merrylegs, wasn’t it? I don’t know why it hadn’t struck me before. Until Dr. Lightowler pointed it out, I’d forgotten how fond you are of the ‘horse genre.’”

The Horse Genre?

Sidone puffed on her hubbly-bubbly. “As Mr. de Courcy often says about a career in the thea-tah, ‘she is a harsh mistress.’”

I said, “Yes, well, I was thinking about, you know, specializing in comedy. . . . Ms. Fox thought—”

Sidone’s head was lost in a cloud of smoke, but I could still hear her. “So Dr. Lightowler suggested you should consider specializing in . . . horse work. She thinks you have the legs for it. And, of course, it’s regular work, especially at Christmas with the pantos, and then there’s always children’s theater groups. Little children love a horse.”

When I came out of her study, I felt like I had been hit on the head with a mallet. I was so dazed. It had come to this. A life as a pantomime horse.

I didn’t tell the girls what had gone on in Sidone’s study. I just said that it was a general chat about careers. But the Tree Sisters kept on asking me why Sidone wanted to see just me and not them. All day they went on.

In the end, I went and hid in the “vole lavatory” and sat on the seat that was all taped down. Flossie climbed on the seat of the next-door loo and popped her head over the partition. I heard her and looked up, and she said, “Goddammit, Miss Lullabelle, tell us why you so ornery you got a face like a baby’s smacked bum. What in tarnation did Ms. Beaver say?”