Five weeks today until show time.
The music is loud the minute we enter the venue, Luc’s hand clutching mine. A lady on the door takes my light summer jacket and hangs it up in the cloakroom. I scan a QR code on the hanger and it pulls up a ticket on my phone to collect when we leave. Gone are my younger years of carrying around a raffle ticket all night, praying it wouldn’t fall out of my pocket onto the toilet floor, covered in an inch of god knows what liquid.
Luc hands me to Jess, who wraps her arms around me tightly. I inhale the familiar rosy scent that takes me back to sitting in the back of our English class, doodling poems in the backs of our books. It’s such a shame she never took up writing as a career. She’s always talking about doing what makes me happy, but I can’t remember the last time I heard her talking about writing. She’d tried so hard in her twenties to get something out there. But she just… stopped one day and, when I try to talk to her about it, she changes the subject.
Jess pulls away, bringing me back into the room, a queue of people forming behind me to either congratulate me or get an up-close look at me and Luc together. I spot Mauve and Rory, pushing their way through, more important than all the others who don’t share my DNA. I don’t look in Mauve’s direction. I can’t do this here. Not after everything she said online. About how I’m callous and cut people out of my life when it suits me, that I’m selfish and I never talk to her unless it’s for my benefit, that I never ask how she is, that of course she didn’t talk to the press about my voice, that she loves meand only wants what’s best for me, that it’s heartbreaking to be treated like that by your child.
‘Hey, tiny. Congratulations,’ Rory smiles affectionately, his arm no longer in a cast but still in a sling from his accident.
I am categorically not tiny, especially not in these heels when we’re practically the same height.
‘Hey, how are you feeling?’ I gesture to his arm.
‘Fine, getting better,’ he says. He glares at Mauve from the corner of his eye. ‘Although if she doesn’t let me move out of her house soon, I might explode.’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘I’ve not spoken to her since she went to the papers about your voice.’ Rory grits his teeth. ‘But she’s flapping around me like a fucking fly.’
I turn away, but Mauve grips my arm. ‘Congratulations, darling.’ She says it into my ear, pressing a kiss against each of my cheeks. ‘I’m so proud of you.’
I don’t– I can’t look at her. I withdraw but she pulls me closer, her grip tightening.
‘Your dress is a little tight across your tummy,’ she whispers. ‘Must be the relationship weight. Hold your bag in front of your body.’
I jerk my arm away and her grip slips off my skin. I swallow down any anger which rises in my throat and leave her standing alone in a crowded room.
Someone else I recognise but can’t place shakes my hand and congratulates me.
‘Do you want gin or a glass of wine?’ Luc asks.
‘Surprise me,’ I manage to get in before the next person hugs me, Dennis less than a foot away.
I’m due to make my speech in half an hour. Everyone here will want to hear from me – can’t imagine why. We’re also going to debut the music video for the new single and, while it was touch and go for a while, my vocal therapist thinks my voice is strong enough to sing it while the musicvideo is on. Jess thinks it will be a good opportunity to turn around the fears that the tour is going to be shit after Mauve leaked my health news. They’ll video it and put it on socials.
Luc returns with my drink, a large glass of white wine, and whisks me off away from the crowd for a few moments. It lets me take in the atmosphere.
It being my eighth album still doesn’t feel real.
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell Luc. ‘I’m going to be whisked away every five minutes all night.’
‘I know what I’m getting into.’ The smile adorns his whole face in a way that smiles only can for Luc, the cherry tinge in his chocolate eyes glinting against the low lighting of the venue. It’s a smile which makes me question why I ever ran all those years ago.
Would we still be together if I hadn’t? Probably not, with everything that’s happened in my career. But would we have still found our way back to each other? I guess I’ll never know.
Maybe we were supposed to end there. To grow up and experience different things so we can come together now, in this beautifully messy way. His hands find my hips. There’s music playing, but I can’t work out what it is. It stops abruptly and there’s a ringing of a microphone being turned on. It’s not a happy microphone.
Jess finds me and takes me up to the front of the room. She stands on one side of the stage, while Dennis stands on the other, and I climb up on stage. I stand to the side of the screen, so the music video isn’t projected onto my face.
‘Hello, everyone.’ The microphone screams when I speak into it, and I glance at Mimi, who is standing to the side of the stage behind a curtain.
I don’t know what to do. I might use microphones regularly, but I’m not an audio engineer. I look out into the crowd to the man in the booth at the back, playing with the optionson the board in front of him and then the ringing stops. A few phones go up and face me.
‘Lovely to see you all. It’s so– er, thank you so much for coming to celebrate the launch of the second single with us. This is the second single from my eighth album –Your Email Didn’t Find Me Well.’ I pause and take a deep breath, letting the loud applause ring out.
Some suitable woops from Jess and Luc.
‘I’m thrilled you could all be here tonight, and I’m so pleased to finally reveal that the second single will beYours, Sie.’
