Later on, as Janey stood backstage, waiting for her special scene, she felt better. The school's summer pop musical, Dreamgirl, was nearly over, and the audience was wonderful. Last year, while he was still at James Bryden, Ronnie Craig had written what he still considered to be his very best song, Someone Waiting. When he and his friend Cliff Hawkins came to write the musical for this year's end of term production, they built it around this particular song. The musical was really a collection of scenes and songs they had fancied writing, strung together by the story of Johnny Starlight, who achieves fame and fortune as a famous singing star. But he is very unhappy because he is haunted by dreams of a mysterious girl. He tours the world looking for her, but he can't find her anywhere. At last, sad and disillusioned, he returns home to the club where he started. And there is his dream girl, singing Someone Waiting.

As Ronnie himself said, the story line was a big zero, but it gave them tremendous scope to do big song and dance production scenes, like the old movies. These had been very well rehearsed, and the audience was thoroughly enjoying itself.

Johnny Starlight had been to Mexico, where Years 9 and 10, in enormous hats and blankets had moved in complicated lines around the stage to clever South American-sounding music. Banditos had staged a running gun battle.

He had been to Spain, where some of Year 11 had a scene as Spanish Gipsy dancers. There were two guitar players, a singer, and the two best dancers in the school, clicked their heels and castanets, spinning in their flounced skirts until they were exhausted.

Year 8 were natives in the jungle. The stage was nearly dark, except for the glimmer of a fire. Gradually a big moon arose, and the dim painted fingers began to move to a marvellous weird tune with strong cross rhythms, which Ronnie and Cliff called Drum Beat.

Then came Janey's favourite scene - Johnny and the Eskimos. The Eskimos were small and they all came out of one tiny igloo, one after another in an endless stream, each smaller than the last. Their tune was Eskimo Rock.

Then came the Jamaican Carnival scene. Years 12 and 13 had combined on this and produced fabulous costumes and setting as well as a genuine steel band. Janey wished Cliff could have heard the whole stage and the audience too, singing his Carnival Song.

Each scene ended with Johnny falling sleep. As the scene darkened, Janey had to appear mysteriously in a faint glowing light. Her arms held out, her face turned away, so the audience could not see her face, while the haunting sound of Someone Waiting echoed through the hall.

Mrs. Sachs had had the idea of dressing Janey in a pale, floating dress, with somebody standing in the wings using an old bellows furiously to make her skirt and long hair blow freely in the breeze. Janey thought the whole idea was corny, like a television advertisement, and was sure everybody would laugh, but the effect was surprisingly romantic, and nobody, not even the boys, laughed at all.

From the time she had stepped out onto the stage, and felt the audience, the live presence of people responding, enjoying themselves, something strange had happened to her. Nothing in rehearsals had prepared her for this wonderful surge of exhilaration, the feeling of being in the right place.

She had the feeling she knew exactly what to do, understood how the audience felt, what they wanted. Now she was completely confident, not at all her usual nervous self. She was acting, as well as singing.

On stage the Club scene had started. Johnny and his party had arrived. The lights went down. Janey picked up her guitar, got a rare reassuring smile from Mrs. Sachs, and walked to her place and sat on her stool.

In the dark she played the first bars of her song, and hearing the familiar melody, she knew it would be all right. How could Ronnie's lovely song fail? She relaxed, concentrated completely on the sound. Her voice flooded out, smooth, rich, golden.

After the big crowd scenes, the contrast was startling to the audience. First the slow echoing notes in the dark, a clear full voice repeating them. Then the spotlight shone on Janey singing. A slim girl in her pale dress, she sat on a stool, playing the guitar herself. Her long dark hair was loose, looping softly forward over her shoulders. Her eyes were dark and serious, slightly tilted, and her skin seemed to glow with an inner light.

Janey's unusual voice, strong, powerful enough to fill the school hall easily without a microphone, had a warm heart-catching quality, which sometimes made people want to cry, but she also had a special stage presence, a startling charisma, which was now, for the first time, beginning to show.

Ronnie Craig was in the audience, standing to one side at the back anonymously, with his friend Dave Hampton, and Mike. He had sweated over this song with Janey's voice at the back of his mind all the time he was writing it. He listened now, with hypercritical intensity. She had a difficult job. After all the exciting crowd scenes, she had to change the mood of the audience to allow for the romantic ending.

He peered at the audience near him. A complete stillness had settled over the hall. Her voice surged out, full of passion far beyond her experience. It was even better than he had dared to imagine. Janey was right into the part, acting as she had never acted before. She was sure and confident. What had happened to her?

'Johnny?' said the dream girl, her voice husky. 'Oh Johnny, I've been dreaming of you all my life!' She held out her arms to him. 'Oh, Johnny, you are real after all.You've come at last!'

The curtains opened again and Janey smiled at them shyly. Bent her head briefly in acknowledgement, and the rest of the cast began to file on to take their curtain call to the background of Carnival Song, all but drowned out in the waves of applause.

It was a generous family audience and everybody got their fair share of applause, but finally, it was Janey they wanted. As the cast took their final bow and walked off, there were shouts of 'Janey!', 'Janey!', 'Janey!' followed by prolonged stamping and clapping.

The lights had come up in the hall now, and frighteningly, she could see all the packed audience. She bowed, smiling, dazzled by the lights, deafened by the noise. Happy. For the first time in her life she felt she was in exactly the right, the only, place for her. And inside her head there was the voice, which had been getting louder all these weeks, which she had tried to blank out: You are a singer, it said. A singer.

She shook her hair back, ignoring the voice, smiled and bowed again to the audience. And bowed yet again, but still they would not let her go. In the end she had to sing Someone Waiting again, and there was another storm of applause.

At last, as though she had done it all her life, although they had not even rehearsed it, she walked to the edge of the stage and lifted her hand, waiting for the applause to die down. Mrs. Sachs watching in the wings thought she knew instinctively how to move gracefully and naturally on stage.

'Ronnie Craig and Cliff Hawkins, who were students here last year, wrote all the words and music. It's a shame Cliff's in Jamaica, but Ronnie's here,' Janey said, smiling down at him and putting out her hand commandingly, so that he found himself walking up the side stairs of the stage to join her, through thunderous applause.

There was a boy standing next to Ronnie, and briefly Janey's eyes met his dark, demanding gaze. She felt curiously shaken, and felt the colour come up into her face. With difficulty, she looked away into the wings and held out her other hand. 'And Ronnie and Mrs. Sachs, our Head of Music produced it.'

Resisting, Mrs. Sachs was thrust out on to the stage, with Janey and Ronnie leading the applause. And then the three stood there, hand in hand, bowing, grinning delightedly as the applause lapped around them.

Janey's inner voice was there again, and this time it grew clearer with each wave of applause. This is your world. This is your place. Why go on struggling against it? She knew very well now that somewhere, somehow, everything had already been decided long ago. She was going to be a singer...to make music her life. Why had she pretended to herself that she had a choice? Mrs. Sachs was right, if she didn't find the courage to try she would regret it all her life.

She knew it was going to be hard. Nasty and difficult people. Too much work always, when others were enjoying themselves. Travelling all the time...loneliness...no family...But sometimes there would be this wild, loving applause, this special feeling. Would it make up for all the other things lost? She didn't know, and it didn't matter now. She'd made her decision. There was no escape - Mrs. Sachs had seen it.