Page 63 of Summer at Croftwood Cinema
IT WAS A week until the launch party and the cinema was almost finished. In fact, most of what needed finishing was purely the special arrangements for the night itself rather than anything integral to the cinema being finished. But tomorrow, they were having a pre-launch dry run to make sure they’d thought of everything. It would be more low-key than the proper launch which would hopefully give Patsy and Oliver chance to enjoy it a bit more.
Ed had invited a couple of his classes — students were always willing guinea pigs — and they’d invited some of the local traders like Jess. Altogether there were going to be about fifty people which was plenty to provide them with enough people to make it feel real but only around half the number they were hoping to invite to the launch party and nowhere near as many as they hoped they would be dealing with on the busiest of nights.
The chairs and tables for the stalls had been delivered two days ago and Patsy was unpacking them as and when she had a minute to spare. They looked amazing, exactly as she had envisaged. In fact, everything was looking just as she’d hoped which she couldn’t quite believe.
The muddy lilac walls looked fabulous against the floor and all the colours of the upholstery contrasted perfectly. They had sumptuous dark plum velvet curtains to cover the screen, which had been carefully cleaned and its tear repaired almost invisibly. The curtains helped to absorb the sound as well which the sound engineer had been pleased about.
After their ‘christening the cinema’ night, Oliver had called the builders back in to pull off the hardboard and reveal the beautiful original wrought iron balustrade that was hidden inside. It had to be sand-blasted as the paint had begun to peel so it was just as well they’d investigated it before the decorators had finished. It had created an awful mess but now, it was restored to its former gold and black glory and it made the foyer into a wow factor that they couldn’t have imagined.
The dry run was going to be for the venue as a function space, so primarily it would be held in the backstage area which had been transformed into a Hollywood party space from the 1940s complete with huge shuttered lights on tripods, a bar with a mirrored back and glass shelves to hold the glasses. Round tables on tall pedestals were scattered so that guests could stand and mingle, and stools, small tables and some of the velvet chairs from the main auditorium made it into a space which felt intimate but perfectly spacious. Patsy was excited to see how it would feel with more than a handful of people in it.
They had converted a storage area which ran down the side of the stalls into the kitchen. There was access from the foyer as well as from the backstage area which made it perfect for functions or regular nights serving cinema goers. Oliver had taken Ed’s suggestion and employed some catering students from Worcester University to work in the kitchen. They were full of brilliant ideas and he was pleased to be able to offer them valuable experience which formed part of their course as well as paying them a wage. One thing he and Patsy hadn’t considered was that the food needed to be easy to eat in the dark and so not too messy. The students were all over it and came up with brilliant twists on classic dishes to make it work. Everyone’s favourite was a steak pie which had the mash baked inside with the filling. It was delicious as well as practical with the mash soaking up some of the gravy so that it was less messy yet moist.
‘Need a hand?’ Matt came up behind Patsy while she was busy unpacking chairs, making her jump.
‘Christ, Matt! Are you trying to give me a heart attack? But, yes. I do need a hand.’
‘What else is left to do?’
‘What isn’t?’
‘That’s not a very helpful answer.’
She sighed. ‘We need to string the fairy lights in the trees at the back. The weather forecast is great for tomorrow so we’re going to have the doors open and maybe put some of the chairs and tables outside.’
‘Have you got any security?’
Patsy laughed. ‘Matt, this is Croftwood. I think we can manage to keep things civil.’
‘No, not because of trouble. To make sure only people on the guest list get in. I mean, if everyone’s out the back, what’s stopping people from walking in the front? You can’t keep it locked because of fire regs.’
‘Thank you Fireman Sam. I’ve got it covered.’ But she hadn’t and was annoyed she hadn’t thought about it. She didn’t have any door staff, thinking that they didn’t need them for the dry run but perhaps that was an oversight. It was another thing for her to-do-before-tomorrow list. Maybe she could ask Jack to man the front door because there would be enough people at the back to make sure there were no gate-crashers. She pulled out her phone and sent him quick text to see.
‘Fine. Sorry. Do you want the fairy lights up tonight?’
‘No, just in case they get nicked overnight. You never know. I think once the chairs and tables are unpacked we’re done for tonight.’ She sighed, realising how tired she was.
‘Okay. I’ll help you unpack and then how about I ring for a takeaway?’
‘That sounds really good, thanks.’
She and Matt had ended up working closely together over the past two weeks. He’d been on site almost every day to make sure that everything was finished to exactly the right specification but tonight he was there as their friend, part of the gang helping to get everything finished in time. It had surprised Patsy how well they’d worked together, but something had changed between them since the night with the carpet. His tendency to second guess her had disappeared. He trusted her and they had developed a mutual respect for each other where work was concerned.
Where work wasn’t concerned, it was slightly less clear what was happening. Matt had walked her home a few more times and they’d chatted easily about all sorts of things. Quite often, she found herself watching him. He was attractive and now that she actually liked his personality, it was hard to ignore the rest of him. She started to notice things like how his hair naturally swept to one side because of a cow-lick on the other. How he absentmindedly rubbed the back of his neck if he was trying to make a decision about something. And now that it was high summer, he was wearing some very sexy tortoiseshell sunglasses that made him look like a 1940s film star, especially now that he’d taken to wearing linen shirts and chinos in the hotter weather. A couple of weeks ago he’d admitted he’d underestimated her and now she was beginning to think she’d done the same to him.
They unpacked the chairs and tables together, checking them over for defects before they moved them down towards the screen ready for some of them to go into the backstage area. ‘We could do with Flo and Sammy to help us with this, I bet they’d love it,’ she said, thinking back to how they’d enjoyed her fake chair testing exercise.
‘I expect they’d be making a cardboard box fort by now,’ Matt said, his voice full of affection.
‘I’m fighting the urge to do that myself, to be honest.’
He laughed. ‘If you can get all these unpacked you can eat your takeaway inside this one.’ He pulled one of the biggest boxes to the side.
Oliver had been in the kitchen cleaning but he’d finished so came to offer a hand. ‘I’ll get all these boxes flattened,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll start moving the furniture into the backstage area.’
Matt smacked his hand to his chest in a dramatic but silent gesture behind Oliver’s back when he flattened the big box, and Patsy burst out laughing. She was so tired, she hardly had the energy to smile but he was really keeping her going.
‘What’s so funny?’ Oliver asked them.
