Alice is Gabriel, and Daze is fazed... * by Mari Howard
It’s Christmas 1997, and Alice Mullins is playing the Angel Gabriel in the Reception Class nativity play.** Mum Jenny has an important meeting at the lab where she works, so her sister Daisy (known as Daze), who made Alice’s costume, goes instead. But Daze is stunned to discover a rival in the audience. Daze slips in at the back of the hall. Crowds of Headleigh Primary’s parents are seated on quarter-sized chairs arranged in a horseshoe, their chatter like the buzzing of bees. The black blinds are pulled down, improvised curtains open, and a couple of spotlights pick out, on the platform, a bale of hay, and two large Swiss cheese plants. Daze smiles at these: obviously in lieu of palm trees. ‘Hey, need a seat?’ Someone directs her to an empty chair, mid-row. Someone asks the inevitable question, ‘Who’s yours?’ ‘Gabriel. I’m her auntie.’ She’s squashed between a plump granny and a pregnant mum. Being tiny, she can’t see over a tall mum with a halo of frizzy hair. A woman in a long...