“Not at all. She was…brilliant. Her strength was in the way she made you feel something. Rough around the edges, even when the notes weren’t perfect. The studio could polish things up, but the part that mattered—the part that hit you in the chest—that was all her.”
“She embraced it,” I realise.
“Yes,” he says. He falls quiet, deep in thought.
“If you ever want to talk about her…I don’t mind.”
His gaze flicks to me, then away. He clears his throat. “Yes, well, thank you. But enough about that. We’re here for you. Tell me about your music.”
“I’ve always strived for excellence. Especially at uni. Fallen short, of course, but…I tried.”
“Perfectionism is the enemy of creativity.”
“I’m not a perfectionist,” I say immediately.
He glances over, waiting for me to say more.
And it occurs to me, then, that perhaps I am, but it hasn’t always been that way. “I used to play just because I loved it. It was the one thing that made sense. After Dad died, music helped me feel closer to him.”
Brandon meets my gaze, steady and sincere. “It must have been a difficult time when you lost him.”
“Yeah…Mum stopped working for a while, and Ellenor buried herself in work. I moved on campus, but I was lonely—I wasn’t much fun to be around, and I couldn’t concentrate in class. Kept bombing assessments. I even stopped writing songs. Anyway…then I met Toby.” I fold my arms against the memory. “We were together for three years. He took music very seriously—he was a violinist.”
“I think I know the type,” he says dryly, though he doesn’t smile.
“Everything with Toby had to be done his way.” I pick at a button on my jacket. “Polished, even when no one was watching. I thought it meant he cared enough to push me. It’s thanks to him I didn’t drop out of my course. Plus, I kept telling myself that once I graduated, things would be better, and I’d finally write songs again.”
“But then Toby got me a job in one of the Sydney ensembles and…I just did that instead.”
Brandon studies me for a moment. “You know, you give him a lot of credit,” he says softly. “But getting through the Con and, I dare say, landing that job—youdid that. Not him. I imagine there was an audition.”
I blink, thrown. I’d almost forgotten about the audition. Toby’s reminders of how he’d ‘pulled strings’ and ‘put in a good word’ are far more prominent in my mind.
“I auditioned on my Cole Clark,” I suddenly remember. “I was meant to use a classical guitar Toby had borrowed—he was furious. He said an orchestra would never take me without a classical guitar.” I snort softly. “Turns out it was acontemporaryensemble. A steel-string was exactly what they were looking for.”
“You were right not to bend for him.”
I look down. “It wasn’t like that,” I say. “He just didn’t want me to mess up my chance.”
I brace myself for Brandon to contradict me, but instead he asks, “How did he take it?”
“Well, he wasn’t happy with me. Didn’t talk to me for days.”
Like so many other occasions, I finally caved, crying and apologising until he could play the hero and console me. I don’t have the stomach to tell Brandon that, though.
“Was that often the case?” he asks delicately. “Him not being happy with you?”
I draw a slow breath, eyes tracing the ripples of dark water near our feet. “Nothing I did was ever enough.”
“Impossible,” he mutters, the word tight, a muscle ticking in his cheek.
The wind slackens, the sea whispering in the lull.
Then he asks, “Are you okay?”
The honesty catches in my throat. “No,” I admit. “Not really.”
His expression tightens, his tone sympathetic. “Anyone would struggle with music after what you’ve been through.”
