I crouched a little, looked over my shoulder and took a tentative step towards my audience. I froze, my gaze fixed somewhere above their heads, a look of fear (hopefully) plastered across my face. Slowly, slowly, I stretched out one arm.

‘Brilliant,’ said Grandad. ‘Let’s have pudding.’

‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ yelled Mum. ‘You’re like a small child, Pat. Have some respect. Rob is acting and all you can do is make stupid jokes.’

‘Yeah, act your age,’ said Dad.

‘Oh, you guys need to lighten up,’ said Grandad. ‘Rob knows I’m joking, don’t you Rob?’

I had to smile.

‘It’s just the four of us,’ Pop continued. ‘I wouldn’t have done it if we’d been in the blankety Sydney Opera House, for crying out loud. Rob can start again.’

‘And will you shut up this time?’ said Mum.

Grandad pulled an imaginary zipper across his lips.

I did the whole crouch, backward glance, step, freeze and arm stretch routine once again. ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me,’ I hissed. ‘The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.’ I closed my hand over empty air and started back a step or two. ‘I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable as this which now I draw.’

I stepped out of character for a moment. ‘I’ll have a dagger in my belt when I do the actual show,’ I explained. ‘A plastic one because I suspect Milltown wouldn’t be too happy if I brought a real one to school.’ That was something of an understatement. They’d probably judge a lunchtime detention a serious under-reaction for threatening the whole school with a blade. ‘Are you with me so far?’ I said.

‘Absolutely,’ said Mum.

‘Lay on Macduff,’ said Grandad. He spread his arms out as Mum and Dad turned towards him. ‘What did I say? Rob asked.’

I took up where I’d left off.

‘Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going; and such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses, or else worth all the rest.’ I gave a small scream of terror. ‘I see thee still, and on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before.’ I shook my head. ‘There’s no such thing: it is the bloody business which informs thus to mine eyes.’

I straightened and looked around me, one hand outstretched. This was the hand that was going to hold the plastic dagger. I wished I’d thought of it before, because I felt a bit of a dill, but I wasn’t going to stop now and get one from the kitchen. Grandad would almost certainly ask me to bring him back a piece of cake.

‘Now,’ I said, ‘o’er the one halfworld nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate’s offerings, and wither’d murder, alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf, whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, with Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design moves like a ghost.’ I looked down at my feet. ‘Thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my whereabout, and take the present horror from the time, which now suits with it.’ I gave a hollow laugh, one (I hoped) full of anguish and self-loathing. ‘Whiles I threat, he lives: words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.’

‘Ding dong,’ said Grandad. Mum opened her mouth to speak, but I beat her to it. Who’d have guessed Grandad knew this play so well?

‘I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.’ I walked off between Mum and Dad’s chairs. The effect was ruined slightly because that meant I ran into the wall, but I hoped my audience would get the general idea.

There was a loud round of applause. Well, as loud as three people can generate. It sounded genuine, as well.