like a wizard. He did not look anything like Mr. Garth. Brooke and her mother and father went on Friday night. It was an Alps of boredom. Brooke fell asleep in the second half. Then Brooke and her mother and father were on their way out of the theatre and they met Mrs. Lee who goes to see it every night and matinee because she has something to do with it. She told them for ages, again, about how realistic it all was and how she went and stood on the stage sometimes before or after the audience was allowed in and imagined she was in the actual real room in her house, and sometimes she could actually believe that she was, that’s how real it was. She told them again how the people doing the play even sent to Amazon.co.uk to get some of the very same DVDs that were in the actual room, with the same pictures on the covers, to make it be true and lifelike. He doesn’t look anything like Mr. Garth looks in the room, Brooke said. Well, none of us knows for sure, do we, Brooke? Mrs. Lee said, and the performance, every night, virtuoso! Mrs. Lee shook her head as if there was something she was looking at that she couldn’t believe. It was kind of you to put the tickets aside for us, Brooke’s mother said, especially with the run being sold out like it is. Then Mrs. Lee spoke some more about how the play was transferring soon to a real theatre. This is a real theatre, Brooke said. You enjoyed the play, didn’t you? Mrs. Lee said to Brooke. I found it weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Brooke said. Mrs. Lee laughed. A bit over her head, Mrs. Lee said over Brooke’s head to Brooke’s parents. It is so not over my head, Brooke said. We all enjoyed it very much, thank you, Brooke’s mother said. We certainly did, Brooke’s father said. Then the Bayoudes said goodbye to Mrs. Lee and left the theatre. They stood outside and waited to cross the road. Virtuoso, Brooke’s father said. Virtue so-so, Brooke said. Her parents laughed so much that she thought about saying it again but people tend not to laugh so much the second time you make a joke. It wouldn’t be virtuoso of her if she did. It would actually be a bit virtue so-so if she did! Why is the theatre always sad, Brooksie? her dad said taking her hand as they crossed the road. Joke or do you really mean it? Brooke said. Joke, her father said. I give up, why is the theatre always sad? Brooke said. Because the seats are always in tears, her father said. It was a good joke when you knew that it was about the other spelling of the word tears: tiers. Tiers: rows of seats on a slant.)
The fact is, Mrs. Lee’s husband isn’t living at the Lees’ house any more. Josie Lee has to go to Bloomsbury to visit him since that’s where he’s moved to. Hugo who is in the play now lives in the Lees’ house because it is so close to and handy for the theatre. Is that a kind of history too? She will write it in the Moleskine. But history usually only records the Abbots and Kings and the Dukes and so on fighting over who gets to own a park like Greenwich Park and who gets put in jail because someone else wants what they’ve got so just sticks them in the jail and leaves them to rot and goes and takes it. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t record all the histories. On the contrary.
(Take One-Tree Hill, for instance, Anna said when she gave Brooke the Moleskine for her birthday. Look how many trees are really on that hill. Lots more than just one tree. Look at Queen Elizabeth’s Oak. We all know the story, or we can find it out really easily if we don’t know it, about how it was already old and hollow when Queen Elizabeth the First sheltered under it when all of a sudden she was caught in the shower of rain. And we know that it only finally fell over about twenty years ago, when the people who decided they were going to conserve it stripped off all the ivy then found out, when they did that, that it was that ivy that had actually been holding it up in the first place, and then while they tried to fix it into place forever with a piece of metal they knocked the tree completely down by mistake. Ha ha! Brooke said and Mr.