If Only I Could Tell You

by Hannah Beckerman

  Perhaps, with treatment, she might have been able to extend the time her oncologist had predicted she had left. Perhaps she might survive twenty-two months, or twenty-four, rather than the eighteen months she had been given. But Audrey had her reasons for refusing chemotherapy and no amount of cajoling—by Lily, Jess, her granddaughters, or her oncologist—would persuade her to change her mind.

  Audrey closed the diary and clutched it to her chest. It was too late to repair so many of the things in her life that had been broken: Edward’s untimely death; the grief they had all suffered; the estrangement between Lily and Jess she had been unable to heal. Audrey no longer knew if she accepted her daughters’ rift as the status quo or was wary of probing too deeply for fear of what she might discover at its root.

  She picked up the photograph of her girls on Woolacombe Beach. She knew she couldn’t wave a magic wand and bring back loved ones she had lost or undo anyone’s pain. But as she looked again at her daughters’ smiles—their happiness untainted by events that would devastate their lives less than two years after that picture had been taken—she was aware of her heartbeat accelerating, and a quiet determination slipping between her ribs.

  If she had eighteen months left to live then she had eighteen months to uncover the cause of Jess’s animosity toward Lily.

  “Granny! Dinner’s nearly ready. Mum says she’ll be home in ten minutes.”

  Audrey placed the photograph on her bedside table, understanding for the first time why she had chosen to move in with Jess rather than Lily: this was her chance to get close to Jess, to find out the reason for her unhappiness. This was her chance to put her family back together.

  As she walked out of the bedroom and onto the landing, Audrey called down the stairs to her granddaughter below. “OK, darling. I’m coming. I’m ready now.”

  Part Two

  March

  Chapter 5

  Audrey

  Audrey and Phoebe walked arm in arm down a narrow Notting Hill street until they arrived at a 1960s low-rise building that looked unprepossessing from the outside. It was grimy and architecturally at odds with the surrounding Georgian terraces.

  “Are you sure this is the right address, Phoebe? It doesn’t look very salubrious.” Audrey stared at the peeling paint on the windowsills and the brown water marks streaking the walls like the tears of a giant.

  “Oh, it’s fine. Come on, stop stalling. We’re probably the first ones here.”

  As they entered the building and followed the black-and-white signs up the stairs toward the second floor, Audrey wondered—not for the first time in the past two weeks—whether she was being brave and intrepid or simply foolish. She still couldn’t believe she was actually going to go through with it.

  It had been just under a month since she’d found her old diary. When she’d mentioned it to Phoebe a week later, during Sunday lunch at Lily’s, her granddaughter’s reaction had taken her by surprise: But don’t you see what finding that diary means, Gran? It means you’ve got a second chance to do all those things. You could sing. You could do a part-time university course. You could travel. This could be awesome.

  It was Phoebe who’d come up with the idea of Audrey joining a choir, Phoebe who’d gone online and searched for one that sounded perfect. And now it was Phoebe who was accompanying her to the audition, insisting she wanted to join the choir too, although Audrey found it hard to believe it was how any seventeen-year-old really wanted to spend their free time. But even with Phoebe for moral support, Audrey’s heartbeat still stuttered each time she tried to imagine singing in front of a complete stranger.

  As they walked along a dimly lit windowless corridor, Audrey recalled the online advertisment she’d read so many times she’d committed it to memory.

  Choir members wanted for a one-off performance. No experience necessary—just passion, commitment, and a love of music. Gala concert at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday 25 June in aid of Save the Children’s Syria campaign. Concert to feature the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and further performers TBC. Open auditions: Wednesday 23 March and Thursday 24 March at West11 studios, 17.00 –21.00. Nearest tube: Ladbroke Grove. For further information contact Ben Levine, Musical Director.

  “Come on, Gran. Deep breaths. It’ll be fine.”

  Audrey followed Phoebe into a large room where light fractured through metal bars to form splintered stripes across the floor. Orange plastic chairs lined the walls, only a few of which were unoccupied—at least thirty people were there already. Glancing around the room, she noticed a man of about her own age with thick-lensed spectacles that made his eyes seem to pop from his head like a cartoon character’s; a woman in her early thirties, headphones clamped to her ears, drumming on her thighs with her fingers; and underneath the window, a woman in her late forties who glanced up from her book and smiled briefly before settling back into her story.

  Audrey willed some confidence to rise up from where it had sunk into the pit of her stomach as Phoebe led her to the far end of the room where a young man was sitting behind a trestle table, beaming at them.

  “Hello there! Are you here for the audition? It’s super to see a younger face, although all ages welcome, of course. If you take a seat and fill out this form, Ben will be with you as soon as he can. There’s quite a few ahead of you in the queue—we’ve had rather a better turnout than we expected—but hopefully it shouldn’t be too long a wait.”

  As Audrey took a seat next to Phoebe and dug a pen out of her bag, she scanned the room once more, wondering whether anyone else was trying to rewrite the script of their life before it was too late.

  “Audrey Siskin? Ben’s ready for you now. Do you want to come up?”

  Audrey’s stomach lurched as if making its own bid for freedom as she lifted herself from the chair, urging her legs to stop trembling. She glanced at Phoebe before following an earnest-looking young woman up the stairs.

  On the floor above, striding across the audition room, hand outstretched, was a tall, attractive man of about forty, his dark hair thick and shiny as though he’d just stepped out of a shampoo commercial. He was beaming at Audrey with a warmth she hadn’t expected. “You must be Audrey? I’m Ben Levine. It’s great to meet you. Thanks so much for coming along today.”

  His American accent took her by surprise. As Audrey shook his hand, her stomach nudging against the belt of her trousers, she tried not to think about the tumor in her liver making her tummy swell as though she were in the early stages of pregnancy in spite of all the weight she’d lost.

  “Don’t be nervous. This is all totally informal. All we want to do today is sing a song, have a quick chat, and figure out whether you’d be happy in this choir we’re putting together. So what brings you here today?”

  Audrey thought about her teenage diary, could taste a residue of that adolescent optimism. And then she thought about the future that was arriving far too soon and felt the truth dissolve under her tongue. “I always loved singing when I was young but . . . I don’t know . . . I’ve barely sung at all since I was a child. And now . . . now I’m getting on a bit, so I thought it was time to put that right.” The half-lie fizzed on her lips.

  Ben hadn’t seemed to notice her awkwardness and he sat down at the piano, smiled at her, gestured for her to stand next to him. “Well, that seems like a pretty good reason to me, though I don’t think you’re getting on a bit. The oldest person I’ve had audition so far today was ninety-two, so from where I’m sitting you’re a veritable spring chicken. What are you going to sing?”

  Audrey hesitated, still unconvinced of the answer to a question that had kept her awake for the past two weeks.

  “‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’ by the Mamas and the Papas. I’ve got a CD here of the backing track. My granddaughter downloaded it from YouTube—I hope that’s all right?”

  As soon as she’d spoken, the words tripping over one another, Audrey prepared to apologize, to say that she’d made a mis
take, to tell this nice young American man that she couldn’t possibly sing that song. It was a song she’d studiously avoided for almost three decades, one that had habitually prompted her to switch off the radio, flick television channels, beat a hasty retreat from shops, restaurants, cinemas. It was a song she hadn’t dared listen to in full since they’d played it on a portable cassette recorder at the funeral almost thirty years before.

  But before she had a chance to speak she heard the opening notes of an introduction that tugged at her heart in a way no other musical sequence ever could: a gentle lilting refrain that caught in the back of her throat and threatened never to leave.

  “No need for a CD. I know it. G major should be good for you, I think. Does that sound about right? We can go half a tone lower if you like, but I think this should work.”

  Audrey nodded as Ben played, unwilling to tell him that she didn’t know her G major from her A minor, that she’d never learned to read music, that there’d never been enough money for lessons. She’d always learned everything by ear, picking out melodies and harmonies instinctively, singing lower or higher depending on what her vocal cords required.

  “I’ll run through a four-bar introduction and then you come in, OK?”

  He was smiling at her with an affability Audrey found disconcerting though she couldn’t understand why. And then it dawned on her. Ben wanted her to do well. He was quietly urging her to succeed. And hard as she tried to remember as she waited for her cue to begin, Audrey couldn’t recall the last time anyone had encouraged her to do well at anything.

  Audrey filled her lungs and waited for the introduction to end.

  Her first phrase was perfect, even a gentle vibrato that hadn’t been distorted by nerves. But as she reached the middle of the second phrase, as she stretched up toward a minor third, her voice wavered, then split, and then dissolved altogether.

  Ben’s fingers halted across the keys, the room silent but for the thumping of Audrey’s heart. As she stood next to the piano, staring at the floor and wishing it would open up and swallow her, she thought that perhaps there were simply too many miles between the dreams she’d had as a teenager and the person she was now. Perhaps the end of your life was just that: an ending. Not a chance to right wrongs, rectify mistakes or fulfill unspent ambitions. Maybe this wasn’t the beginning of the final chapter of her life. Maybe she’d already reached the epilogue without even realizing.

  “That too high, huh? No problem, my mistake. Let’s try a tone lower, OK? Deep breaths. You can do it, I know you can.”

  The piano introduction began again and Audrey closed her eyes, allowing the music to envelop her. And this time when she sang, her voice didn’t waver or fracture or dissolve. This time the notes rang out confidently as though there had never been any doubt that they would. And for three minutes, Audrey completely forgot herself. She forgot Ben at the piano and his assistant at the back of the room and the paint peeling on the walls. She forgot her cancer and the clock ticking loudly in her ears and the deep ruptures in her family. For the first time in years, Audrey managed not to think about her guilt and her disappointments and her catalogue of losses. She sang and all that existed was her and the music and the flood of memories that would forever be associated with that song.

  When the music came to an end, Audrey opened her eyes to discover that she wasn’t curled up with her daughters on the sofa, blinking back her tears, or standing at the front of a congregation in mourning, fixing her gaze firmly forward. Instead she was in an audition room in west London having sung a solo in front of strangers for the first time in her life.

  Ben was staring at her and Audrey felt heat bleed into her cheeks.

  I’m sorry, she wanted to say, I shouldn’t have come. It was all a dreadful mistake. I’m sorry to have wasted your time. But her voice cowered inside her embarrassment and she couldn’t coax it out.

  “Well, I wasn’t expecting that.” Ben looked at her, eyebrows raised, and then glanced over her shoulder to his assistant. “Audrey Siskin—I can honestly say that you’ve made my day. That was incredible. You say you’ve never sung professionally before?”

  Audrey shook her head, words still eluding her.

  “Well, all I can say is that whatever brought you here today, I’m damn pleased that you came.” He was standing up now, grinning at her.

  “So . . . It was OK?”

  “OK? God, if everyone auditioning today was half as good as you we’d be giving Gareth Malone a run for his money. It was fantastic. If you give your contact details to Caitlin, she’ll keep you updated on everything. But the first rehearsal is two weeks from today and then we’ll be rehearsing every Wednesday evening and Saturday afternoon—you can do that, right? And you know the concert is on June twenty-fifth? We have just over eleven weeks to turn all you auditionees into a professional choir.”

  Audrey nodded, her head feeling as though she’d just drunk two glasses of prosecco in quick succession. As she told her details to Caitlin, she tried not to think about her next appointment with the oncologist in three weeks’ time, tried to reassure herself that there was no reason she wouldn’t stay well enough for long enough to see this through.

  Chapter 6

  Lily

  At the top of the white stucco steps leading to her front door, Lily cursed as her key jammed in the lock. It had been two days since she’d asked the housekeeper to get it fixed but clearly it hadn’t been mended yet. She managed to wiggle her key at just the right angle to unlock the door before gesturing to the waiting cab that she’d only be ten minutes.

  “Phoebe! It’s me! Are you home?” The house was silent. She kicked off her shoes and ran up the stairs to Phoebe’s room. “Phoebe, are you in there? I’m only popping back quickly. I’ve got a cab waiting outside.”

  Still nothing. Lily listened, her head pressed against the wood, then eased open the door, knowing the wrath she’d face if Phoebe were inside and she entered without explicit permission. But the room was empty.

  Silence resounded through the deserted house, the stillness prickling the hairs on the back of her neck. Standing on the threshold to her daughter’s bedroom, the quietness enveloping her, Lily found herself remembering all those nights she had lain awake in her childhood bed, hearing things she knew she shouldn’t. A conversation from decades earlier began whispering in her ears, trying to draw her in, forcing her to remember: voices hissing into the silence after their owners had thought everyone had gone to sleep, Lily lying under her duvet, knowing she should put her fingers in her ears to shut them out but being unable to stop herself listening.

  How could you? How could you have done that? I will never, ever be able to forgive you.

  I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. The last thing I’d ever want is to hurt you or the girls. You must know that.

  Lily snapped open her eyes, unfurled her clenched fists, and blinked against the memory. Hurrying across the landing into her bedroom, she swiped open her phone and tapped out a message to Phoebe.

  Where are you? I’ve just popped home to get changed. I’ve got a last-minute work dinner tonight, but I shouldn’t be too late.

  Heading into the small dressing room attached to her bedroom, Lily unzipped her dress as a message pinged on her phone.

  I’m at the audition. With Gran. Not that you remember, obviously. Gran’s supposed to be coming for dinner afterward and you’re SUPPOSED to be picking us up. But I guess none of that’s happening now and I’ll just have to tell Gran that you’ve stood her up yet again.

  Lily frowned. She opened the calendar on her phone, scrolled through the day’s appointments, could find no mention of her mum coming for dinner. She swiped through the rest of the week and there it was, under tomorrow’s date, staring at her accusingly.

  I’m so sorry, darling. I’ve put the wrong date in my diary. I thought it was tomorrow. Can you apologize to Gran for me and tell her we’ll still see her for lunch on Sunday? I hope the audition goe
s well. Klaudia should have left some supper in the fridge so make sure you eat something when you get home.

  Stepping into an almost identical black dress to the one she’d just put in the laundry basket and smoothing the material over her hips, worrying that perhaps it was a little tighter than it had been when she’d last worn it and making a mental note to add an extra weekly gym session to her diary, she turned toward the empty rail on the opposite side of the dressing room. Less than a month ago it had been filled with Daniel’s suits and shirts, ties and T-shirts, sweaters and jeans. Now the hangers swayed on the rail as if unsure whether they’d been liberated from their burden or were bereft of purpose. She glanced down at her phone, opened her private email account, and reread the last message she’d sent Daniel the previous evening.

  I know you’re really busy and it’s frantic there at the moment, but it would be really good to get dates in the diary for when you’re coming home for the weekend. Phoebe misses you. We both do. I hope work’s going well. Speak at the weekend. L xx

  Lily checked the trash folder, in case Daniel’s reply had somehow got mislaid, but the only messages in there were emails about marketing conferences and magazine subscriptions. She exited her Sent items, her eyes flicking down over the contents of her account. And there it was, staring at her: the folder containing all the emails she had written to Jess over the years, none of which had ever been answered.

  Lily scrolled through them, page after page, and clicked on an email from January 1998, her hand tensing around the phone as she began to read.

  Dear Jess,

  I hope you got the card and flowers I sent. I was so thrilled to hear from Mum about the safe arrival of Mia. It’s such a beautiful name and I’ve no doubt she’s a beautiful baby. I hope you’re OK and that motherhood is everything you thought it would be. I suspect these first few weeks will be tiring and probably a little overwhelming, but I’m sure you’re doing a wonderful job.