We’d done this before. Not actually at an awards show, but we were a band: we played new music live all the time. This wasn’t any different.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
So why was my stomach twisting – my pulse pounding a thousand times a minute?
Maybe this was a mistake. Perhaps we should have just gone with ‘Adventure’, or ‘Clifftop Ode’, both crowd pleasers we knew how to perform without really thinking.
But deep down, I knew we had to play this song.
Jessy wasn’t here, but perhaps she would watch the stream. Perhaps she would hear it. Perhaps she would know, understand, that I was still thinking about her.
‘And we’re a go!’ hissed the person with the headset.
I blinked. It couldn’t have been two minutes already.
‘Big smiles, lyrics are on the prompter, you’ll smash it!’ whispered Derek with two big thumbs up. ‘Go get ’em!’
Ben snorted, but he pasted on a smile and stepped around the corner as a huge cheer erupted from the audience.
This is it.
I followed him, the familiar routine sinking in with each step I took on to the stage. For a moment, all thoughts fled my mind. The crowd was huge – not stadium big, but sizeable enough to still feel daunting. The microphone was waiting for me, there in the middle of the stage, and there was a comfort in slipping into the old habit of stepping towards it and smiling.
Even if the smile wasn’t for them.
‘This is a song,’ I said quietly, my voice echoing into the large space as Matt moved his mic closer to where he stood by the electric keyboard, ‘for a woman who never asked for a song … but inspired one anyway.’
Ben gave us the beat and we launched into what I had called ‘Butterflies’ in my head.
The chords progressed, the music swelled, and I opened my mouth, the words pouring out as effortlessly as breathing.‘Butterflies, it was butterflies the moment I first saw you –’
And that was when I looked down at the crowd and saw Jessy seated in the front row.
TWENTY-FOUR
All I ask is the world, and I would give it to you if I could hold in my hand everything you give me …
– from ‘The World’, by These Exiles
THIS WAS A MISTAKE.
I knew it was.
But then, I had known this was a mistake right from the start.
I should never have signed that contract. I should never have joined Butterflies when Laura asked.
But I had, and I did … and now I was front row at the Songwriter Awards, staring up at the most handsome man I had ever known, listening to a song I was almost certain had been written about me.
‘Coffee cup, looking up, seeing the world change in your eyes …’
Oh, this was a mistake.
And it was all Laura’s fault.
‘Just this one teeny tiny favour!’ she had wheedled, turning up at my hotel suite with Anna, a look of steely determination and a dress that was far too short.
‘It wasjust one favourlast time,’ I’d pointed out hotly, ‘and look where it got me!’
