The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me (11 page)

I went to the canteen and sat in the corner, ignoring my opera-school fellows at the Singers’ Table. They all looked so normal, sitting there munching croissants in those stupid
bucket chairs
; so relaxed. Jan Borsos had the two posh girls, Sophie and Summer, in fits of laughter while Violet and Ismene giggled away with their gang. Hector, the one with the ginger bouffant, was trying to work his chinos-and-blazer magic on Helen, who was laughing in his face in that very pleasant manner she had. He seemed unaware.

They were all trendy and nice and young and talented. I felt stupid and clunky in the ‘trendy’ outfit I’d bought to fit in. And ashamed that I’d bought a special outfit at all, especially given that I wasn’t planning to stay. What was wrong with me? Why was I always on the outside of everything, trying to fit in? Never belonging. Never quite at home.

Separate. Different. Weird
. My gut twisted savagely, self-pity like an ocean swell.

‘You’ll get into the swing of things soon,’ said the assistant at the till. ‘They’re not as bad as they look.’ She was a
kindly-looking woman of around sixty, whose accent was very familiar.

‘They’re lovely, actually,’ I admitted. ‘It’s me that’s the problem.’

‘Aha!’ Her face lit up at the sound of my voice. ‘Black Country?’

‘Just about. Stourbridge. Not sure I belong somewhere like the Royal College of Music.’

‘Walsall,’ she said proudly. ‘And I
do
belong at the RCM. So do you, bab. You’ll see.’

I smiled, not knowing what to say, and took my bacon sandwich to the corner.

Helen came over almost immediately. ‘I see,’ she mused. ‘So … everyone’s sitting over there and you’re choosing to sit in the corner. Really?’

I liked Helen. For someone who had resorted to medication to overcome her first-week nerves she was also rather ballsy, in an understated sort of way. Plus she was now offering me a Rolo, which made her doubly brilliant. No one bought Rolos any more.

‘Thanks,’ I said grudgingly. ‘I’ll take two, if you don’t mind.’

‘Be my guest. Rolos are magic with a bit of bacon.’

I smiled.

‘Are you OK?’ she said. ‘I don’t want to act all chummy when we’ve only just met but … Well, you don’t seem to be having a good time of it.’

I struggled to know what to say.

‘And I’m not a lesbian either,’ she said sternly. ‘I just like you.’

I felt a tiny glow somewhere in my stomach that had
nothing to do with the Rolos. ‘I like you too,’ I said shyly. ‘And now I feel like I’m ten years old and should ask you to be my best friend for ever.’

‘Actually, that’d be great,’ she said, sitting on the arm of my chair. ‘I dumped my best friend recently. It would be
so
convenient if I could just slot you in there.’

In spite of myself, I laughed. ‘Why? Your best friend, I mean.’

Helen’s best friend, it transpired, had been sending flirty text messages to Helen’s fiancé, Phil. Things like
I hope Helen knows how lucky she is. Don’t tell her I said that
and
Can’t wait to see you at the altar. You’re going to look well bloody handsome. xxxxxx

‘Wow,’ I said, marginally more cheerful. ‘Hasn’t she missed the point? Flirty banter with a man who’s MARRYING SOMEONE ELSE?’

Helen laughed too, although not without sadness. ‘Phil was so scared he eventually just gave me his phone and shouted, “Help.” It’s not the first time she’s cracked on to someone I love. I had to ditch her.’

‘Must’ve been horrible,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Losing your best friend is as bad as losing a lover, I think.’

Helen nodded reflectively. ‘Mm. So, you too?’

I thought of Fiona, so far away, and felt sad. ‘Me too.’

‘Oh, go on. I’ve shown you mine. Show me yours.’

I took a deep breath. I didn’t like talking about me and Fi because whenever I did the huge gap between us, and all of the mess in between, began to feel real. So I kept it vague. ‘My cousin,’ I replied eventually. ‘Practically my sister. We’re still best friends but she’s buggered off to New York and won’t come back. We can only chat every few
days now.’ The bottomless sadness started to tug and sting.

‘Which is why,’ I continued brightly, pinching another Rolo and perking up a little, ‘I think this is an excellent project. Let’s be best friends. We should have a ceremony.’

Helen nodded. ‘Excellent. I’ll dig out some My Little Ponys and we can paint them with nail varnish. Or whatever you do with a BFF. Go and buy tampons together. Shoplift them, probably.’

I sniggered.

She picked up my plate and stood up. ‘Come on. Get your arse over to the table. Singers have inhabited it for several decades, they say. We can’t let the side down!’

I looked at them all, so bright and cheerful. I felt heavy and pathetic. I couldn’t even rouse the strength to tell her I was leaving.

‘Come
on
,’ she insisted, walking off. ‘If we don’t socialize with other people we’ll get too intense and have a massive fight and then I’ll have to find
another
bestie. Frankly, Sally, I can’t be arsed.’

I laughed out loud. ‘You’re funny,’ I told her.

‘STOP TRYING TO CRACK ON TO ME.’ She grabbed my arm and marched me off to the table. ‘Lesbian!’

We sat down between Hector-the-ginger-bouffant and a guy I’d not yet spoken to – I thought I’d heard someone refer to him as Noon. I’d disregarded this information, presuming it an error. ‘Hi there,’ he said cheerfully. He had a ponytail and a biker jacket. ‘I’m Noon. We’ve not yet met …’

‘Sally,’ I said. I didn’t understand. Why was his name
Noon? Why would anyone’s name be Noon? I looked round the table at smiling faces, half-drunk lattes and discarded KitKat wrappers. I thought about how at the Royal Opera House none of the singers had gone anywhere near dairy products – problematic for the vocal cords, apparently – and I marvelled at how relaxed my fellows were. It confounded me. Why were they not breaking into terrified sweats and running to the toilets with a Code Brown at the thought of the day ahead?

Helen, I noticed, was on her second packet of Rolos. ‘Butt out,’ she muttered, noticing my attention. ‘I’ve run out of beta-blockers.’

I forced myself to talk to Hector and Noon for a while and, in spite of relating to nothing they said, I relaxed slightly.

But not for long. At around eleven I became aware of something having changed in the room and before I even looked around I knew it was Julian and his stupid long, shiny hair. He was getting a cup of tea. Just for a minute, I forgot everything and started to giggle. He looked so completely ridiculous; so not Julian. He was wearing
cords
and a
smart shirt
and a
blazer
. I italicized those items mentally, still baffled and more than a little amused. What was he on?

You don’t know who Julian actually is
, I reminded myself. The sniggering stopped, which was lucky because Helen was watching me keenly.

Julian paid for his tea and some biscuits, then scanned the room. Looking for me?

Looking for me. He caught my eye, just before I snatched it away, and smiled, waving a snack packet of Jammie Dodgers in my direction. A million feelings, none of them
comfortable, exploded across my abdomen like shooting stars, and I found myself staring at my lap, willing him not to come over. Jammie Dodgers. That was a cruel trick.

‘Hello,’ he said, arriving at our table.

‘Hi!’

‘Hello!’

‘Oh, HI THERE, Julian!’

Everyone, I realized, was overexcited about seeing him. Summer, the posh girl, actually pinched Sophie, the other posh girl, and Hector’s face lit up like a summer’s morn. ‘So good to meet you,’ he muttered, jumping up and pumping Julian’s hand. ‘I’m
such
a fan of your work. And that masterclass yesterday …’ His hands circled wildly in the air and he trailed off, apparently dumbstruck.

‘You didn’t notice that I called Rossini Italian?’ Julian grinned. ‘Or that when I demonstrated that little bit on the piano I played like an animal with cloven hoofs?’

Everyone roared with laughter and told him not to be silly. I wondered how I’d ever found his silly accent appealing. It was horrible. Stupid. And why had I always found him so funny? Why did everyone else seem to think he was funny?

‘It was fantastic, Jules,’ Violet gushed.

I scowled.
Jules?

‘Meh,’ Julian said modestly. He opened the packet of Jammie Dodgers and offered them around. Everyone giggled about his choice of biscuit except me. I knew what he was up to. Trying to remind me of the past. Make me smile. Bastard.

‘You are totally magnificent. I have much honour to meet you,’ Jan Borsos said. His customary furious
expression was even more furious than normal, but it was full of warmth.

‘Hey, man! You must be Jan Borsos! I heard you walked here. Good work, dude!’

Jan all but died on the spot, his furious face a-thunder with awe, pleasure and disbelief. ‘Dude,’ he muttered in wonder. ‘I am dude.’

Faced with the loveliness of Julian’s smile – a loveliness I now knew to be completely untrustworthy – Violet couldn’t resist coming back for more. ‘It was SO fab working with you.’ She beamed. ‘And I’m surprised I’ve never met you before, actually. I was on that workshop last summer at the Chicago Opera. How odd that –’

I tuned her out. I tuned them all out, all of them with their pointed mentions of people they’d trained with whom Julian might know, or performances they’d seen him in that had blown them away. Had I been a screamer I’d have screamed loudly, told them they had no idea. That he was a dangerous liar. A criminal.

Julian, all modest rebuttals and witty one-liners, stood in their midst like some sort of flowing-haired biscuit-toting saviour among the hopeless and starving. ‘Aw, thanks, man … No, not at all … Oh, come on, mate, I wasn’t
that
good …’ My skin crawled with loathing. ‘Man’ one minute, ‘mate’ the next.
Shut up, shut up, shut up. Go back to New York. Or Devon. Or Siberia. Just go
.

Helen was watching me, one eyebrow raised.
Tell me
, her face said. I shook my head in reply. Where would I start?
How
could I start? She nodded respectfully, as if to say, ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ and I felt gratitude for that decent, steadfast girl.

Eventually, Julian stopped accepting pleasantries and made an announcement. ‘So, ladies, I just came over to find out who’s going to audition for the advert. Did all of you see the poster?’

Lots of affirmative nods.

‘Definitely auditioning,’ Violet said. Summer, Sophie, Ismene and even Helen came soon after.

‘Great,’ Julian said warmly. ‘Get practising. I want you to sing the shit out of that aria! We don’t want some pikey from Guildhall or the RAM getting it, right?’

Everyone giggled, except me. (‘Pikey!’ ‘Isn’t he hilarious?’ ‘OMG, I can’t believe he said that, hahaharrr!’)

Julian looked in my direction.
Don’t
.
Don’t you dare speak to me
.

‘Sally?’ he said. He sounded a little less sure of himself. ‘How about you?’

Eyes swivelled towards me. Violet smiled brightly, her face transmitting various messages, such as ‘You’re not ready to audition’ and ‘Why does he know your name?’ and ‘I really do
not like you
.’ At that moment I didn’t care about Violet or what she thought of me. Only Julian and I were in the room now. Julian and his lies and masks.

‘Pikeys?’ I heard myself blurt mulishly. ‘Really?’

Julian folded his arms across his chest, but I knew him well enough to know that it was a sign of discomfort rather than confidence. ‘I was joking, clearly,’ he said quietly. ‘If the very talented students of those venerable institutions are pikeys then I share the same status as a sickly fly living on one of my dad’s cowpats.’

(‘Cowpats?!’ ‘HAHAHA!’ ‘Oooh, Julian, does your
father have cows? Out on a big American ranch or something? Cool!’)

Stop it
, I thought furiously.
Don’t you dare make intimate jokes with me
.

Julian was watching me. ‘Well? Are you going to audition?’

‘I don’t think I’ll have time,’ I muttered. ‘I have a part-time job.’

Violet nodded, pleased.

There was a momentary silence as the other girls waited for him to try to change my mind. But he was out of ideas. He just stared nervously at me, a tiny pulse beating above his eye. He was wearing some extremely expensive scent I’d never smelt before and his shirt was ironed to within an inch of its life. It was all bollocks.

It was a great relief when he nodded politely, allowed Jan to hi-five him and mooched off to join Brian, who had just arrived and was making himself some tea. As he went I noticed a little patch of his hair that had escaped the gel and sat, fluffy as a poodle, around his ear. It was the final straw. I felt my eyes sting and had to dig my fingernails into my palms so hard the skin broke.
Don’t. Don’t you dare
, I ordered myself.

‘Isn’t it nice that he’s learned everyone’s names?’ Violet said. She looked expectantly at me, wanting me to tell her how Julian had known mine.

‘Isn’t it just,’ I agreed wearily.

Brian and Julian were deep in conversation over by the hot drinks machine, which was making me even more uncomfortable. I didn’t want my lovely Brian to be infected by Julian.

As if reading my mind, Julian paused, mid-conversation, and looked at me; Brian, too.

I bristled. They’d better not be talking about me.

Julian said something to Brian, who nodded thoughtfully, then patted Julian’s arm and wandered out with his cup of tea, humming to himself. Julian went off to read in a corner.

I spent the remaining minutes before my first and last singing lesson in conversation with Noon and Ismene, and I didn’t hear a word they said. It was a relief to think that I wouldn’t have to talk to these people again. They were lovely, nothing like I’d expected, but they were part of a world that I simply wasn’t ready for.

I stood up to go to my lesson, saying nothing. I couldn’t explain it to these people when they’d waited their whole lives to train here.