After I had arrived for my performance and before I was due to go onstage, I had taken to sitting before that countryside board and imagining myself in those meadows with Lord Vincent Woodward. I pictured him sitting alongside me, his hand twining in my hair, while he pointed out that all the land we could see was his, and would be ours when we were married. If I concentrated hard enough, I could almost feel the tickle of the soft grass against my bare legs, smell the freshness of the strands I’d pulled up in tufts, hear the sound of sparrows chirping, and church bells in the distance. I’ve never been much of a believer but those bells were probably the most important part of it. The ones I heard every Sunday from St Paul’s could be those same ones that carried on the gentle breeze in my imagined meadow. Their chimes were the sole thing that connected the place where I wanted to be with where I was now. You see, St Giles may be where I was coming from but I had no intention of staying. Crillick’s and the Great Amazonia were my path out of there. I’d make sure of it.

Ellen always teased that I was away with the fairies when she found me sitting there, but she had her own dreams. When I’d first started at Crillick’s, one of the very first things she’d told me was about the cousins in New York that she would go to as soon as she’d raised enough money to get her mum and sisters out of Galway. It was what had made me warm to her, that ambition to get on that burnt in me too. I judged her to be around twenty-five or so, five years older than myself. It was clear she knew her way around and, though I was streetwise enough, I saw in her someone who could help me learn the ways of the theatre. I’d not expected her to still be around but nine months had passed since the day we met and here she still was, and talking about America less and less.

There was no time for dreaming now, though. The band had struck up, which meant that the curtain would soon rise. I strained my ears for its heavy velvet swoosh while I wriggled into the skins Amazonia wore. Ellen handed me my feathered cloak and beads. I pulled them on and sat down to chalk the soles of my feet so I wouldn’t slip on the polished boards of the stage. Bouncer had been sleeping, but now he sat up and wagged his tail, sensing that things were about to start happening.