We must assume that this well is therefore important, and we would be remiss if we didn’t pay it a visit. He took us for afternoon tea at Brown’s, to a magic show and the theatre, and for dinner shockingly late, at eight or nine at night, in restaurants where laughter sparkled off the golden walls, and ladies daringly showed their shoulders in evening gowns. It would be terribly difficult,’ agreed Daisy, mercifully leaning back again and sitting down on the chilly stone floor.

Around us were the enormous hulking shapes of the theatre’s boilers and generators, spiderwebbed and casting jumpy shadows behind shadows as we turned the pocket torches we always carry on them. I have fallen short in all three of these tests, and even Daisy, with her flawless skin and her flair for drama, loves cake.I think that in ‘death in the spotlight’ Hazel will get bad stage fright and Daisy won’t understand and she will love the limelight. There on the street, staring at that horridly creepy posters, I knew that the mystery at the Rue Theatre had taken a new and darker turn. Your aunt has arranged that you are to be in my play, no matter how dreadful you are, but, all the same, I’m curious to see what you’re made of.

They said all their lines about falling in love beautifully, but they clasped hands as though they wanted to do violence to each other. Please don’t comment with any personal details like your address – I’ll only ask the winner to give me their address privately, and I won’t use it for anything else. All the usual bit-part players have been snapped up by other theatres – they can afford to pay better, and poor Frances is in a bit of a bind financially at the moment. And I thought to myself rather uncomfortably that, although I knew that everyone at the Rue was a good actor, I was not sure whether they were all good people. I am the Prince of Bengal and these are my friends, the Princess of Kowloon and the Duke of Massachusettes.I am not discussing this any more,’ said Miss Crompton firmly, as though Martita was no older than us. Rose had spoken as though the thought had only just occurred to her, quite innocently, but Lysander’s face flamed furious red. I also want some of the Deepdean girls ( like Beanie, Kitty and Lavinia) to come and watch the play to see Hazel and Daisy and help them.

I think that during a modern day telling of Romeo and Juliet with Hazel’s father’s fourth cousin once removed playing Juliet at the Shaftesbury Theatre, Juliet is supposed to glide into the scene from the topmost balcony to act as if she is a figure in Romeo’s dream, but the line ‘fails’ and she falls to her death. She takes the role afterwards and she is the least likely suspect already with an alibi compared to some others, such as the husband of the actress, who suspected there was something more than just friendship between Hazel’s relative and the actor who played Romeo, but Daisy finds a pair of scissors in her study with bits of the safety wire caught in them, so Hazel is cleared of blame. This person was wearing a shapeless brown dress, and she moved heavily, thumping her feet down on each step and squeezing the gold railing so hard I thought she might leave dents in the metal. It became all-consuming, and I almost forgot, for the time I was there, that the rest of London existed.I came pretty close with the jealous understudy angle with Martita, but I think I prefer your ending; it’s a lot more complicated! I hope that Hazel will get the lead role instead of Daisy (of course Daisy will be very unhappy about it) but I want to see Hazel more in the spotlight rather than Daisy. He has a monocle that he has a habit of screwing into place over his eye and peering at me through, and he has an immensely important and secret job that we are not supposed to know anything about. Inigo was directing the rehearsal like a particularly angry deity, Rose and Martita were sniping at each other furiously – Rose was still loudly convinced that Martita was behind the posters – and Rose and Lysander seemed to have had yet another argument. Scene One begins with Romeo pining after Juliet, and Mercutio and Benvolio joking together about Rosaline.