‘Where are we again?’ she asked, above the crowd noise. ‘I’ve gone blank.’
The big shaven-headed guy holding the bass told her: ‘São Paulo.’
‘We’re in Brazil?’
They looked at her as if she was mad.
‘Where have you been the last four days?’
‘“Beautiful Sky”,’ said Nora, realising she could probably still remember most of the words. ‘Let’s do that.’
‘Again?’ Ravi laughed, his face shining with sweat. ‘We did it ten minutes ago.’
‘Okay. Listen,’ said Nora, her voice now a shout over the crowd demanding an encore. ‘I was thinking we do something different. Mix it up. I wondered if we could do a different song to usual.’
‘We have to do “Howl”,’ said the other band member. A turquoise lead guitar strapped around her. ‘We always do “Howl”.’
Nora had never heard of ‘Howl’ in her life.
‘Yeah, I know,’ she bluffed, ‘but let’s mix it up. Let’s do something they aren’t expecting. Let’s surprise them.’
‘You’re overthinking this, Nora,’ said Ravi.
‘I have no other type of thinking available.’
Ravi shrugged. ‘So, what should we do?’
Nora struggled to think. She thought of Ash – with his Simon & Garfunkel guitar songbook. ‘Let’s do “Bridge Over Troubled Water”.’
Ravi was incredulous. ‘What?’
‘I think we should do that. It will surprise people.’
‘I love that song,’ said the female bandmate. ‘And I know it.’
‘Everyone knows it, Imani,’ Ravi said, dismissively.
‘Exactly,’ Nora said, trying her hardest to sound like a rock star, ‘let’s do it.’
Milky Way
Nora walked onto the stage.
At first she couldn’t see the faces, because the lights were pointing towards her, and beyond that glare everything seemed like darkness. Except for a mesmerising milky way of camera flashes and phone torches.
She could hear them, though.
Human beings when there’s enough of them together acting in total unison become something else. The collective roar made her think of another kind of animal entirely. It was at first kind of threatening, as if she was Hercules facing the many-headed Hydra who wanted to kill him, but this was a roar of total support, and the power of it gave her a kind of strength.
She realised, in that moment, that she was capable of a lot more than she had known.
Wild and Free
She reached the keyboard, sat down on the stool and brought the microphone a little closer.
‘Thank you, São Paulo,’ she said. ‘We love you.’
And Brazil roared back.
