Page 19 of Crescendo

I didn’t say anything, just smiled lightly at her—scoping out her reaction, that growing curiosity as she studied me, maybe even… something anxious, hesitantly recognizing she was being seen, before someone else crashed our party.

“All right, all?” he said, a tall man sidling up to the table who matched a description I hadn’t even finished placing before Clara scoffed, confirming it.

“Bugger off, Dodge, I’ve got better things to do than talk to hangers-on.”

Dodge grinned at me. “You’re Lydia, then, eh? Chuffed to bits to be meeting you.”

“You’re the dodgy bloke Clara mentioned,” I said, and he laughed good-naturedly.

“Dodge, that’s right. I hear you’re the one to beat in this cohort,” he said.

“I’ve been hearing that a lot,” I said, nodding towards Eliza, but it was Bansi who answered.

“Of course! Do you know her work? She’s amazing.”

“Can’t say I really do,” Dodge said. “It’s not really my scene. Sure I watch films, go to the cinema, but I’m not like Claralistening to a movie soundtrack just for the sake of listening to it.”

Pigs flew and cats and dogs lived in harmony, because Hannah spoke spontaneously without any relation to anything Eliza had said. “You’re a rocker, huh?”

Dodge threw some—well, dodgy devil horns. “Rock on, yeah. You sound Scouse. You got that Beatles legacy?”

Hannah grinned. “Rock’s where Eliza and I started out. I want to do film scores, but, like… from a rock angle. Just gotta get my foot in the door.”

Eliza, for all her posturing like she was too classical and elegant for rock music, smiled slyly at me. “I’ll bet Lydia Howard Fox is too busy with dramatic orchestral scoring to deign with rock music.”

I scoffed. “You think I studied music theory anddidn’tjust get a photo of John Lennon to worship and call it a textbook?”

Dodge—from nowhere, seemingly—had a guitar case in his hands, thrusting it into my face. “I was about to bum around, play a little music for my mates, but now I’m curious if you know how to rock, too.”

I wasn’t a guitarist. But when I saw Ella’s eyes sparkling looking at me, it wasn’t like I was turning down the offer to show I could suck at an instrument too. “Now, I didn’t say I could play guitar,” I laughed, but I took it from the case, shifting to hold it in my lap. Staff didn’t seem to care—given how this place seemed to be the favorite haunt of Crescendo students, music probably broke out spontaneously here all the time. “I know a couple chords and that’s about it, so I suppose now’s the big chance for everyone to see me humiliated after all, but—just for Hannah up north—anyway, here’s Wonderwall,” I laughed, fiddling the chords before I set about strumming, and the table broke out in laughter.

“That’sManchester,you bloody Yank,” Hannah laughed.

“Ah, you all sound the same to me,” I said with a grin their way, getting eyerolls from both the Liverpudlians at the table, but apparently Hannah didn’t take jabs as personally as Eliza did, because she set her regional differences aside to sing the song along with me, until the whole table joined us.

And wasn’t it interesting that Ella kept her voice low and steady, deliberately ducking it under everybody else’s? The girl could sing—I could tell even just from the barely-there voice she used—but she kept it hidden under a quiet voice and tapped her foot to the beat instead.

I’d get through to her. One way or another. I was getting obsessive about finding out how this woman ticked, and how to get all the music that Iknewwas just under her surface.

Chapter 6

Ella

It wasn’t like I’d never been to the Royal Albert Hall before but there was something different about taking a tour of it with a bunch of musicians and composers. They were friendly enough with Olivia and the other liaisons that it was clearly something they did for every class, but, as we walked around the building, hearing facts and seeing angles audiences usually didn’t, it felt like we were the first group to ever grace its floorboards. Nonsense, of course, but theatres were just engrossing like that.

And I wasn’t even the most mesmerised member of the group.

Eliza had said over breakfast that her goal was to get a piece played on its hallowed stage, and you could see it in her eyes as we moved around the building. She tried hard to keep it locked down, but even her confident bravado couldn’t cover up the childlike wonder. This really was something she cared about. Which probably explained why she was being nasty, particularly to Lydia. It was no excuse, of course, but I’d seen it time and time again—the ways people struggled to handle big emotions and took them out on those around them. In an ideal world, we’d all know how to handle and process our emotions, but wewere messy, imperfect beings. And, well, I was hardly one to talk about the ways people handled their emotions.

We walked across the stage and I kept close to Lydia’s side. It was odd, honestly, how she felt like a safety blanket against any stage fright being there gave me. We’d only just met and, even more ridiculously, she was a massive star. One who belonged on stages like this, who’d undoubtedly performed on a million stages. Standing next to the star should have brought more attention and scrutiny, and maybe it did, but there was also a piece of it that hid me. There was never going to be any outshining Lydia Howard Fox—no matter what Eliza said about her losing her touch or wanting to be bigger than her.

“How does it make you feel?” Lydia asked as we paused, looking up at the rows of seats.

My heart pounded in my chest, my stomach twisting in on itself like a wet cloth being wrung out. “Tiny. Terrified.”

“You’re not tiny,” she said, smiling up at the empty seats. “Even on a stage like this.”

“Objectively, I am.”

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