Page 77 of Crescendo

The Royal Albert Hall was where people like Lydia got to play or have their music played. It was an institution, a legacy, a historical monument in living time. It was not whereradiologists who’d only just learned how to pick a key to compose in got played.

Clara shot me a look. “Well, I brought food, so maybe a break will help.” She held out a bento box for me. “It’s vegetarian.”

“Thanks, Clara,” I said, smiling gratefully and moving to drop onto the floor as she approached and handed it to me.

She hummed as she crossed her ankles and folded gracefully down to sit on the Persian rug with me.

The two of us ate in companionable silence for a moment before she looked at me, her chopsticks held in the air almost gesturing towards me.

“So, you want it, then?” she asked. Clara often sounded a little reserved when she spoke but, this time, particularly so.

I looked at her, feeling heat prickling at my cheeks. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

In truth, I couldn’t believe the rumours had been true that our next pieces could be in the running for a performance at the Royal Albert Hall. It hadn’t once occurred to me that it was anything but talk, something people wanted to true, an impossible dream. But, this week, we’d been set our assignment and, with it, came the news that the rumours were true. One of us really was going to get the opportunity of a lifetime, if we wished to be considered for it. I could only assume they hadn’t thought to imagine someone like Lydia would be in the programme—someone who didn’t need Crescendo’s help to achieve such lofty heights.

She smiled. “It’s okay to want it, Ella.”

I sighed. “I mean, I’m not going to pull a Lydia and attach a note stating that my work shouldn’t be considered for the… prize? Is that the word for it?”

“You can call it whatever you want. It’s just us here.”

“Right.” I chewed slowly on a piece of tofu katsu. I wasn’t sure where she’d ordered this from but it was amazing. “I guess I just feel… silly going for it?”

She resumed eating but regarded me intently. “How come?”

“Because… er. Well, because… it shouldn’t really be me, right? I’m not good enough, I’m really new, I’ve been a mess this whole time, and, you know, they pitched it as a fantastic opportunity to boost your composition career. This is the kind of place that can actually do that, it’s not just talk.”

“And you think you don’t have a composition career?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes. I’m a doctor. I worked hard for that.”

Clara grinned. “You’re working hard for this, too. And, just for the record, you’ve not been a mess lately.”

“Thank you.” I ducked my head, looking down at my bento. “I still feel like a mess.”

She hummed and was quiet for a moment before saying, “We’re human beings, Ella. Most of us feel messy inside a lot of the time—sometimes worse than others. But, music? It’s a way to channel all of that, to put down in notes everything you don’t have the capacity to say, every emotion and experience that can’t be captured in anything other than a musical piece that… changes lives.”

“Maybe Lydia’s music can do that, but I’m not there.”

“I think you are. Lydia thinks you are.”

My insides twisted, my cheeks burning. “Lydia just likes me, and you’re just… sweet.”

She ate quietly, considering. “I’m not going to get in your business, but you’ve unlocked something the last couple of weeks, and it’s that same something that everyone who creates music is looking for. Passion, inspiration, bravery.”

I chewed my lip. It had mostly recovered from where I’d bitten it raw when Lydia hadn’t been talking to me, when she’d shut down who she was because she’d seen me fall apart and didn’t want to break me further. I’d been so scared and confused. Convinced she wouldn’t still want me because she’d seen the mess, all of it—the anger, the snapping, the mess of snot and tears and my body shutting down from being drained. And confused by how she was still there, looking after me, but not there, everything that made herLydiashut away in a box I could no longer reach.

It had been better since she’d told me she knew about Callum. We still hadn’t talked about him much, I hadn’t been ready, but she was back now, Lydia again. She still watched me sometimes like she was afraid I was going to snap like a twig, but she was back. I no longer felt like I couldn’t breathe around her because it felt like I was losing her and that wasn’t a feeling I was good with. These days, if I couldn’t breathe around her, it was simply because she took my breath away.

“I don’t really know if I’d call it bravery,” I told Clara.

She paused, looking up at me seriously. “I would. It takes so much bravery to put yourself out there, to be vulnerable where people can hear it, see it. You’ve been through something awful and you put it in your music. I don’t have to know exactly what it was to feel it when you’re playing, to know it’s there, to watch the way you’ve caged yourself up for so long but, when you play now, you finally let yourself be free.”

I felt like she’d doused me in cold water for a second, terrified someone else had found out when I wasn’t prepared for it. I’d forgotten the social media accounts Natália had found even existed. The idea that multiple people had found them wasn’t something I was ready to handle.

But it wasn’t that. It was Clara saying that, when I played, she felt something similar to how I felt listening to Lydia’smusic. I wasn’t really sure what to do with that, mostly because I understood what she meant. Every song Lydia had ever written contained a piece of her and, the better you knew her, the more you could see them all. Every piece made youfeelsomething. That was part of what made her so good, made her a legend. Her pieces captured something it was almost impossible to describe because what she was doing was recording the human experience in music. It was all so much more than mere notes on a page.

“You’re very incisive,” I eventually said, smiling softly at her.

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