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“One song.”
He shouldn’t push it. He was still healing, still needed to do his vocal exercises. Would always need to take extra care of his throat. He didn’t need the risk. He didn’t need to sing.
“Tell me when you’ve got the brass.”
36: Jupiter
There was a banner stretched across the front of Moon Blink. Celebrate our 5th birthday with a full orchestra, and for one night only—The Voice—Damon Donovan returns. Dinner and drinks deal.
So he was back. He didn’t stay in London. He didn’t fly anywhere else after she sent him away.
She wasn’t ready to see him.
She only wanted to see the others, apologise for not being in contact, find out if Jamie and Taylor got it together, how Heather was doing at uni. Maybe ask a few questions about Damon to see how he was.
She didn’t think he’d be here.
She turned back the way she’d come, she’d go home to the flat where she’d start paying her own rent now, curse the dress, curse the heels. She could’ve worn jeans. What was she thinking? She’d glammed up for God’s sake. She’d put her hair up and worn dangly earrings.
Of course she’d hoped he was going to be there.
But now she wasn’t ready to see him and certainly not to hear him sing. She’d stood in the house of her ex-husband and told Hamish she and Damon were finished, that she didn’t want him in her life. She’d rejected him as surely as he’d done her.
She’d pick up takeaway and eat at the flat. She’d try this another weekend when she felt stronger. When she’d caught up with Trent, found a new job and…
One night only?
She’d gotten as far as the end of the street. What if he wasn’t going to be there again? What if he was about to go to LA? She looked back towards the bar, there was a crowd at the door. It’d be packed out. Good for Angus. She could slip in; find a corner to hide in. She needn’t see any of them. She’d done that once before, sat there anonymously, watched Damon, listened to him. It would be good to know how he sounded, if he could sing with his new voice.
She could treat this like a professional assessment. It was engineering: mechanical, technical, measurable. No reason to feel threatened by it. Certainly no reason for the horrid rock and roll in her stomach.
Oh God, she wanted to see him. Needed to. Just once more. Just to know, really know, he was all right. Cancer of the throat. It was a warm night but she still shivered. He had to have been terrified.
She heard the music before she recrossed the street as Moon Blink’s door opened to let more people in. If the guys were on stage, she might get away with being in the cro
wd and not get caught out. If Heather was there, she could say hello, leave her best wishes and come back later when she wasn’t so ridiculously uptight. She could make a lunch date with Taylor.
She could phone Damon and set a time to see him, when she wasn’t so strung out.
She was never going to phone Damon.
Because if she had his voice in her ear, no matter what he sounded like, she’d give up her sanity to keep it there.
She crossed the road and entered the bar, trying to act like smoke, ease her way in, be transparent and insubstantial. It was even louder inside. Standing room only. Perfect. She found a corner where she could see a good portion of the stage. No sign of Damon. Maybe she’d missed him. He might’ve opened, which would mean he was at the bar, or in the green room. She couldn’t see the bar for people. She could see the band and a cast of extras, a piano, violins and a saxophone, trumpets. Jamie out front, which was unusual. He was singing John Legend’s All of Me.
She craned her neck and looked for Taylor. Found her at the side of the stage, eyes locked on Jamie, the expression on her face characteristically fierce, except she was smiling. Jamie was singing for her. It looked like they’d worked it out. Taken a risk on each other. She knew she wasn’t leaving till she found out.
As the song ended, Taylor moved back to centre stage. Jamie leaned in to her, but she pushed him away, laughing; turning her head, she smiled off to the side. Georgia followed her line of sight. Damon, sitting on a tall stool in the shadows. Her knees locked.
Taylor sang the first lines of Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball and Georgia flattened herself against the wall, because seeing Damon made her feel like she might shatter.
He wore black suit pants, a white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the neck and chest, the sleeves rolled up his forearms. He had his sunglasses on, all effect, all cool and suave, untouchable, at least for her, because she couldn’t trust him, couldn’t trust herself not to want to start up all over again, and then where would she be if his cancer came back, if he was bitter about his career, or something else went wrong, and he pushed her away again.
She hadn’t known how to leave Hamish and she was never truly in love with him. She wouldn’t survive having and losing Damon again.
No, they weren’t meant to be. And she’d known it from the start. He’d soft-soaped her with talk of colours and a fish in a plastic bag, with a princess dress and a gala ball. He’d romanced her with tea-lights and his way of seeing the world, and his hands and his voice, always his voice, no matter its texture, with the words he could say that went straight to her soul and lifted her up, made her world shimmer—until they’d crashed her into darkness.
It wasn’t London’s weather that was depressing. The lack of colour, the chill, the bleak was in her. That’s how being without Damon had made her feel. Like a vital part of her was missing. And that was no way to live, with that threat stalking beside you, making you doubt what you saw, what you heard. Sound was only pure until it told a lie.
