She reached the keyboard, sat down on the stool and brought the microphone a little closer.
โ๎ขank you, Sรฃo Paulo,โ she said. โWe love you.โ And Brazil roared back.
๎ขis, it seemed, was power.ย ๎ขe power of fame. Like those pop icons she had seen on social media, who could say a single word and get a million likes and shares. Total fame was when you reached the point where looking like a hero, or genius, or god, required minimal e๏ฌort. But the ๏ฌipside was that it was precarious. It could be equally easy to fall and look like a devil or a villain, or just an arse.
Her heart raced, as if she were about to set foot on a tight-rope.
She could see some of the faces in the crowd now, thousands of them, emerging from the dark. Tiny and strange, the clothed bodies almost invisible. She was staring out at twenty thousand disembodied heads.
Her mouth was dry. She could hardly speak, so wondered how she was going to sing. She remembered Dan mock-wincing as sheโd sung for him.
๎ขe noise of the crowd subsided. It was time.
โRight,โ she said. โHere is a song you might have heard before.โ
๎ขis was a stupid thing to say, she realised.ย ๎ขey had all paid tickets for this concert presumably because they had heard a lot of these songs before.
โItโs a song that means a lot to me and my brother.โ
Already the place was erupting.ย ๎ขey screamed and roared and clapped and chanted.ย ๎ขe response was phenomenal. She felt, momentarily, like Cleopatra. An utterly terri๏ฌed Cleopatra.
Adjusting her hands into position for E-๏ฌat major, she was momentarily distracted by a tattoo on her weirdly hairless forearm, written in beautifully angled calligraphic letters. It was a quote from Henry Davidย ๎ขoreau.ย All good things are wild and free. She closed her eyes and vowed not to open them until she had ๏ฌnished the song.
She understood why Chopin had liked playing in the dark so much. It was so much easier that way.
Wild, she thought to herself.ย Free.
As she sang, she felt alive. Even more alive than she had felt swimming in her Olympic-champion body.
She wondered why she had been so scared of this, of singing to a crowd. It was a great feeling.
Ravi came over to her at the end of the song, while they were still on stage. โ๎ขat was fucking special, man,โ he shouted in her ear.
โOh good,โ she said.
โNow letโs kill this and do โHowlโ.โ
She shook her head, then spoke into the microphone, hurriedly, before anyone else had a chance to. โ๎ขank you for coming, everybody! I really hope you all had a nice evening. Get home safely.โ
โGet home safely?โ Ravi said in the coach on the way back to the hotel. She hadnโt remembered him being such an arse. He seemed unhappy.
โWhat was wrong with that?โ she wondered out loud. โHardly your normal style.โ
โWasnโt it?โ
โWell, bit of a contrast to Chicago.โ โWhy? What did I do in Chicago?โ
Ravi laughed. โHave you been lobotomised?โ
She looked at her phone. In this life she had the latest model. A message from Izzy.
It was the same message sheโd had in her life with Dan, in the pub. Not a message at all but a photo of a whale. Actually, it might have been a slightly di๏ฌerent photo of a whale.ย ๎ขat was interesting. Why was she still friends with Izzy in this life and not in her root life? A๎er all, she was pretty sure she wasnโt married to Dan in this life. She checked her hand and was relieved to see a totally naked ring ๏ฌnger.
Nora supposed it was because she had already been super-famous with
๎ขe Labyrinthsย beforeย Izzy decided to go to Australia, so Noraโs decision not to go may have been more understandable. Or maybe Izzy just liked the idea of a famous friend.
Izzy wrote something under the picture of the whale.ย All good things are wild and free.
She must have known about the tattoo.
Another message came through now from her.
โHope Brazil was a blast. Am sure you rocked it! And thanks ten million for sorting out the tix for Brisbane. Am totally stoked. As we Gold Coasters say.โ
๎ขere were a few emojis of whales and hearts and thanking hands and a microphone and some musical notes.
Nora checked her Instagram. In this life she had 11.3 million followers.
Andย bloody hell, she looked amazing. Her naturally black hair had a kind of white stripe in it. Vampiric make-up. And a lip piercing. She did look tired but she supposed that was just a result of living on tour. It was a glamorous kind of tired. Like Billie Eilishโs cool aunt.
She took a sel๏ฌe and saw that while she didnโt look exactly like the excessively styled and ๏ฌltered photos on her feed, which had been for magazine shoots, she did look cooler than she ever imagined she could look. As with her Australian life, she also put poems up online.ย ๎ขe di๏ฌerence with this life, though, was that each poem had about half a million likes. One of the poems was even called โFireโ but it was di๏ฌerent to the other one.
She had a ๏ฌre inside her.
She wondered if the ๏ฌre was to warm her or destroy her.
๎ขen she realised.
A ๏ฌre had no motive. Only she could have that.
๎ขe power was hers.
A woman sat next to her.ย ๎ขis woman wasnโt in the band, but she exuded importance. She was about ๏ฌ๎y years old. Maybe she was the manager.
Maybe she worked for the record company. She had the air of a strict mum about her. But she began with a smile.
โStroke of genius,โ she said. โ๎ขe Simon & Garfunkel thing. Youโre trending across South America.โ
โCool.โ
โHave posted about it from your accounts.โ
Sheโd said this like it was a perfectly normal thing. โOh. Right. Okay.โ โ๎ขereโs a couple of last-minute press things tonight at the hotel.ย ๎ขen
tomorrow itโs an early start . . . We ๏ฌy to Rio ๏ฌrst thing, then eight hours of press. All at the hotel.โ
โRio?โ
โYouโre up to speed with this weekโs tour schedule, right?โ โUm, kind of. Could you just remind me again?โ
She sighed, with good humour, as if Nora not knowing the tour schedule was totally in character. โSure. Rio tomorrow. Two nights.ย ๎ขen the ๏ฌnal night in Brazil โ Porto Alegre โ then Santiago, Chile, Buenos Aires, then Lima. And thatโs the last leg of South America.ย ๎ขen next week itโs the start of the Asia leg โ Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan.โ
โPeru? Weโre famous in Peru?โ
โNora, youโve been to Peru before, remember? Last year.ย ๎ขey went out of their minds. All ๏ฌ๎een thousand of them. Itโs at the same place.ย ๎ขe racecourse.โ
โ๎ขe racecourse. Sure. Yeah. I remember. Was a good night. Really . . . good.โ
๎ขatโs what this life probably felt like, she realised. One big racecourse.
But she had no idea if she was the horse or the jockey in that analogy.
Ravi tapped the woman on the shoulder. โJoanna, what timeโs that podcast tomorrow?โ
โOh damn. Actually, itโs tonight now. Timings. Sorry. Forgot to say. But they only really have to speak to Nora. So you can get an early night if you want.โ
Ravi shrugged, dejected. โSure. Yeah.โ
Joanna sighed. โDonโt shoot the messenger.ย ๎ขough itโs never stopped you before.โ
Nora wondered again where her brother was, but the tension between Joanna and Ravi made it feel wrong to ask something she should so
obviously know. So she stared out of the window as the coach drove along the four-lane highway.ย ๎ขe glowing tail-lights of cars and lorries and motorbikes in the dark, like red and watching eyes. Distant skyscrapers with a few tiny squares of light against a humid backdrop of dark sky and darker clouds. A shadowy army of trees lined the sides and middle of the highway, splitting the tra๏ฌc into two directions.
If she was still in this life tomorrow evening, she would be expected to perform an entire concertโs worth of songs, most of which she didnโt actually know. She wondered how quickly she could learn the set list.
Her phone rang. A video call.ย ๎ขe caller was โRyanโ.
Joanna saw the name and smirked a little. โYouโd better get that.โ
So she did, even though she had no idea who this Ryan was, and the image on the screen seemed too blurry to recognise.
But then he was there. A face she had seen, in movies and imaginings, many times.
โHey, babe. Just checking in with a friend. Weโre still friends, right?โ She knew the voice too.
American, rugged, charming. Famous.
She heard Joanna whispering to someone else on the coach: โSheโs on the phone to Ryan Bailey.โ
