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not in the same league as, say, preparing a PowerPoint presentation about sales and marketing plans for a new anti-dandruff shampoo, as Sam’s last job had required him to do. Maybe it was the same. She didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine what people actually did in office jobs, sitting at their computers all day long. Sam was peppy right now, he was leaving for work each day looking very chipper , because he’d just got a new job as marketing director for a bigger, ‘more dynamic’ company that made energy drinks. There were lots of twenty-somethings at his new office. Sometimes she could hear their drawling speech inflections creeping into his voice. He was still in the honeymoon stage. Yesterday he’d said something about the ‘forward-thinking corporate culture’ and he’d said it non-ironically . He’d only started a week ago. She’d give him a grace period before she started teasing him about it.
    ‘Can I go play on the iPad?’ said Holly from behind the sheet.
    ‘Shh, your mother is auditioning,’ said Sam.
    ‘Can I have something to eat then?’ said Holly and then, outraged, ‘Ru by !’
    ‘Ruby, please stop licking your sister,’ sighed Sam.
    Clementine looked up and tried not to think about how the sheet was attached to the ceiling. He wouldn’t have stuck thumbtacks in their decorative ceiling, would he? No. He was the sensible one. She picked up her bow and positioned her cello.
    The excerpts were on her music stand. There had been no real surprises when she’d gone through them yesterday. The Brahms would be fine. The Beethoven, okay, as long as she phrased the opening convincingly. Don Juan of course, her nemesis, but she just needed to put the time in. She’d been happy to see the Mahler: fifth movement of Symphony No. 7. Maybe she’d play Sam the Mahler now, keep him happy, and make him think this was helping.
    As she tuned, she heard Marianne’s German-accented voice in her head giving her audition advice: ‘First impressions count! Even when you are tuning! You must tune quickly, quietly and calmly.’ She felt a sudden fresh wave of grief for her old music teacher, even though it had been ten years since she died.
    She remembered a time when she’d started to panic because she’d felt she was taking an inordinately long time to tune and she’d thought she could sense the impatience emanating from the other side of the screen. It was in Perth, and she’d had to carry her perfectly tuned cello across a quadrangle in the most extraordinarily searing heat and into a frosty concert hall.
    All auditions had a nightmarish quality to them but that one had been particularly traumatic. The monitor had asked her to take off her shoes before she went on, so that her high heels couldn’t be heard clicking across the stage and give away her gender. He’d also suggested she try to avoid coughing or clearing her throat as that too could give away her gender. He was kind of obsessed with it. As she’d walked onstage one of her stockinged feet had slipped (Black stockings! On a forty-degree day!) and she’d shrieked in a very gender-specific way. By the time she’d finally tuned the cello, she was a mess. All she could think about as she quivered and sweated and shivered was how much she’d wasted on flights and accommodation for an audition she wouldn’t get.
    My God, she hated auditions. If she got this job she never, ever wanted to audition again.
    ‘Ruby! Come back! Don’t touch!’
    The bedsheet suddenly fell from the ceiling to reveal Sam sitting on the couch with Holly on his lap and Ruby sitting on the floor, looking both guilty and thrilled at what she’d achieved, the sheet pooled around her.
    ‘Whisk did it,’ said Ruby.
    ‘Whisk did not do it!’ said Holly. ‘ You did it, Ruby!’
    ‘Okay, okay,’ said Sam. ‘Relax.’ He gave Clementine a wry shrug. ‘I got this idea in my head that we’d do a mock audition every Sunday morning after breakfast. I thought it would