Saturday 9 March dawns in a very grey, rainy way, as if it knows my soul. Eight years to the day since Kate was killed and here I am touring the show in South Africa, but to my disgust this tour is not curing me and, what is more, Kate seems still to be dead. I swear I am not looking for her, but the problem with Cape Town is that I came here with her quite a bit and even though the cafes have changed hands, the pavements have been improved, shop fronts have been renovated, in spite of all of that, the weather is the same, shut your eyes and people talk in the same way; open them again and the mountain is right there where it has been for a good few years now, even before I came here with Kate for the first time.
I have to get across town. I wait for the weather to change as I have no umbrella or raincoat... or even much of a cardy with me. I wait. And I wait some more. In the end I go out anyway and get soaked - hanging around is more distressing than getting on the move. And - infuriatingly - once out on the street moving, I can't help but cry. I don't want to, I try not to, but I just can't help it. I turn my face to the sky, to let the rain dilute my tears and I hope I look slightly less deranged than I feel. Obviously, a woman in not much of a cardy, tunes pounding in her earphones, face skywards does not immediately say all's-well-in-the-belfry, but I like to think it was an improvement.
Mostly this day passes unremarked. Sometimes I'll get a text or two, fewer as the years pass, or I'll find I need to mention it to whoever I'm with, just to say it out loud. Mostly I'll contact Mum and maybe Charlie, but not as a matter of course. It's not that big a deal, really, not like her birthday. Her birthday is heartbreaking. But I suppose it's not an ordinary 9 February, it's one here in South Africa.
The ipod is an attempt to block out my feelings, or at least to modify them, but it keeps playing things which remind me of her, or me or... the state of things now. And it's not just Kate, ridiculously it's my dad, it's.... all the things I'm struggling with. And no amount of other people - and there are lots of them for me to turn to - will make any difference. There is a show tonight and I wonder, idly, whether I'll get my shizzle together and be able to do it, which thing I have wondered many a time an oft in the past few years. I always do a show with most of the words in the right order, the quality of which I am in no position to judge: but I turn up and do my level best, and I'll do that again tonight.
During the two week break between runs, we had gone to see the Theatre Arts Admin Collective. They are based in a Methodist church hall next door to the church and they are mostly a rehearsal space where classes also take place. Sometimes they convert into a theatre for shows they want to host. I confess I'd not done a great deal of research and when we visited the place looked lovely and Caroline who runs it was great, but I couldn't quite see the how it would become a theatre space, which only goes to show, yet again, how little imagination I have.
Jacques and Martin teched the show without me the night before the show so that I could go and see Les Mis with a man I'd met... but more about that another time. Yes, I have much to confess: Les Miserables, for crying out loud! And it is lovely and sunny by the time we get to the theatre to prepare for the show, the space looks fabulous, it has been transformed. Once again I wonder at my luck and I wander around in it, putting on my make-up. Plugged into my ipod I dance around a bit as per my routine warm-up. While we are preparing we have to lock ourselves into the place - it is gorgeous and on what appears to be a quiet residential street, but the threat of crime is never far away. Then people start arriving and suddenly it looks like I'll be doing the show any minute now - how does that always come around so fast?
The script mentions the date of Kate's death, and, as I am prone to do, I spontaneously adapt the line "And it was a beautiful day, the 9th of February 2005, eight years ago today, quite chilly, but not a cloud in the sky." Feeling the audience hear it I am slightly less alone, which is nice. And I wonder, as I plough on through the text, at the strangeness of things, that beautiful day in London in 2005 which tore Kate from this trivial round and this rainy 9th of February in Cape Town where I pursued consolation but could not find it... except for here beneath the lights. The show is not therapy, how I wish it were, I think for the squillionth time, but there is... something in this strong sense of belonging I feel on stage, where I am meant to be alone, where time is both suspended and passing at speed. If Kate had not died I would not be here; I would give anything to have her back, but that is not an option and, given the reduced smorgasbord on offer to me, I would not want to be anywhere else.
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