by Mandy Baggot
‘Ray,’ Dr Crichton said again. ‘You can’t sing.’
‘With all due respect,’ Ray replied. ‘I can’t not sing right now.’
‘I know it may feel like that. I know all about the pressures you vocal musicians are under but…’
‘Do you?’ Ray interrupted. ‘Do you really? Because I see a doctor making a lot of money from the fact that we have to sing. I mean, if we didn’t sing, if we didn’t fuck up our voices, you’d basically be out of a job.’ He didn’t really know how much sense he was making, but he couldn’t stop now. ‘So, really, you should be encouraging me to sing, to make sure you’ve got enough in the bank to get your daughter that Porsche she keeps coveting on Instagram.’
Dr Crichton leaned against the edge of his desk and flicked his torch on, then off, then on again. Ray swallowed. What was he saying? This man was only trying to help him.
‘Sorry,’ Ray apologised. ‘That was total crap.’
‘Hmm,’ Dr Crichton mused.
‘I am sorry, honestly. It’s just difficult. How things are for me right now.’
‘And it’s difficult for me also,’ Dr Crichton said. ‘I don’t want to be the guy who tells you you can’t do the job you need to do. But, more seriously, I don’t want to be the guy who has to tell you that you can never sing again. At all. Because you haven’t followed my instructions.’
Yeah, there was that. That would definitely be worse.
‘You need an operation, Ray, I told you that.’
And that was the real problem. His other fear. The one that crept up on him in nightmares. The one that harked back to his childhood. The one where his mum was supposed to get better and then didn’t. He needed to work out his priorities. A life possibly without his career. Or a life.
‘I know,’ he breathed. ‘But, you’re the best there is. There must be something you can give me. Is there anything you can give me to see me through the next few weeks?’
Dr Crichton rolled his eyes and put his hands down on the desk next to him, as if ready to spring off, grab the nearest paperweight and slug him in the head with it.
‘Please, Dr Crichton, I’m begging you. I’ll do all the exercises, I’ll minimise studio time and singing before a performance, I promise. But help me out here.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘There’s no magic medicine, Ray.’
‘I know. But you know I’m going to walk out of here and sing. We both know that, right? So, I’m asking for your help to minimise the damage continuing to sing might do.’
‘You are by far my most exasperating client,’ Dr Crichton said, moving from the desk and returning to his big chair.
‘And your most talented?’ Ray suggested with a smile. The doctor was now writing on a pad. Was there some special remedy he could take that was going to take the worry away from him? Lately, any change in his tone, any rasp in his voice had him downing as much Evian as he could get his hands on.
‘More water,’ Dr Crichton said. ‘No throat-clearing and breathe moist air.’
‘Moist air?’ Ray queried. ‘You mean I should sit in a steam room or something?’
‘That would be excellent. But a hot bath would also work in between times.’ Dr Crichton passed him the piece of paper he had made notes on.
‘Great,’ Ray said, poised to take it.
‘But, seriously, Ray, I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I didn’t reiterate that you are putting your voice and your whole career at risk if you carry on singing. I want you in for that operation before Christmas, or over Christmas, I’m not going anywhere this year… apparently I have a Porsche to buy.’
Ray nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I hear you.’ He stood up.
‘One more thing,’ Dr Crichton said, parting the blinds over his office window.
‘Yeah?’
‘It might be wise to take the back exit when you go. There seem to be a few journalists outside the front door.’ He turned back to Ray and smiled. ‘Now, I don’t know if they are here for you or Not-Ariana but—’
Ray sucked in a breath. The last thing he needed was the reporters knowing he was here. ‘OK,’ he answered. ‘Thanks.’
Forty
Stretton Park Primary School
‘No, Joseph, we can’t have a takeaway from Dar’s Delhi Delights tonight, even though they have a special offer for buy one meal get one half price, with a free onion bhaji starter and 10 per cent off drinks. If I have a curry, it’s going to bring on the baby, and we have to get to Bethlehem!’
‘Well, Mary, how about we have an extra-large fillet of cod from Ralph’s Plaice at 97 The High Street, Stretton Park. And hand-dipped chips with no trace of palm oil and the best crispy battered sausage this side of Jerusalem.’
‘Oh my Jesus,’ Dennis commented to Emily, poking a white chocolate mouse into his mouth as he watched the Year Sixes on stage.
‘What are you doing here?’ Emily asked him, trying to listen to her children speaking their lines. ‘You never seem to be with your class.’
‘Ah, well, today Years Four and Five have the firefighter in for a talk so Mrs Rossiter and Amy are watching them.’
‘So, you thought you’d come to the hall and put off my students instead.’
‘I’m not putting them off,’ Dennis insisted. ‘I’m showing support. I’m just not sure about this script.’
‘You and me both,’ Emily said, sighing. ‘But with Mr Dar and Ralph Rossiter both trying to out pledge each other for advertising space, I don’t have a lot of choice. I’m just hoping none of the other eateries on the high street want to jump in too. I mean the money is lovely, we’re getting some great costumes from Amazon and this cool smoke machine that omits dry ice that won’t make everyone choke, but do you know how hard it is to write something heart-warming, funny and Church of England friendly, while slipping in promotions for discounted dahl and half-price hake?’
‘Miss Parker!’ It was Alice shouting from the stage. ‘Joseph just said he was going to eat a lamb tikka masala. He can’t say that because the shepherds are going to come on with lambs later and the audience will think they are going to die.’
‘I think you’re doing wonderfully,’ Dennis remarked. ‘Really.’
‘Alice, please call everyone by their real names and not by their character names or it’s going to get very confusing. Joseph – I mean, Matthew – could you cross out the word “lamb” on your script and put the word “prawn”.’
‘Porn?’ Matthew shouted loudly, a thick black pen in his hand, his Joseph bandana falling over his eyes.
Half the class started laughing and Emily really really hoped they were the members of chess club…
‘Prawn,’ Emily repeated. ‘P-R-A-W-N. They live in the sea.’
‘My mum’s actual allergic to prawns,’ Cherry announced, waving a magic wand she insisted she needed to be an angel. ‘If she even eats one, her face blows up and she’s sick everywhere.’
‘Like you were in front of the bishop,’ Angelica teased.
‘That’s enough, Angelica. Now, where did we get to?’ Emily asked.
‘You said “porn”,’ Matthew repeated.
‘Makenzie, could you please write “p-r-a-w-n” on Matthew’s sheet for him please? And everyone else, please do the same on your scripts.’
‘On his sheet?’ Makenzie queried, adjusting his donkey ears.
‘What’s wrong with you today, Year Six? Did you stay up too late watching Home Alone last night?’
‘I watched it!’
‘And me!’
Dennis grinned at Emily. ‘I actually watched Bad Santa. It reminded me of the “What Christmas Means to Me” afternoon. Who won the best tableau competition in the end by the way? Because I’m sure everyone was far more interested in the Claus versus Jackson bout.’
‘Frema won,’ Emily informed. ‘Her interpretative dance based on Hanukkah and the storyboard of King Herod trying to kill the Baby Jesus were both very powerful.’
‘Miss Parker!
’ Alice shouted again.
‘What’s the matter, Alice?’
‘Makenzie is writing with pen on Matthew’s costume!’
‘Makenzie,’ Emily said forcefully, striding forward to the stage. ‘What are you doing?!’
‘You told me to, Miss Parker. You said I had to write “prawn” on Matthew’s sheet.’
Emily closed her eyes and looked at the large letters ‘p’ and ‘r’ now Sharpie-d on her Joseph’s cloak. Today wasn’t going well and tonight she had the get together with her parents. All in all, she had had much better Fridays… long ago… probably almost in days BC.
‘I meant write it on Matthew’s script. You know, the paper you’re reading the lines from,’ she told Makenzie with a sigh.
‘You did say “sheet”, Miss Parker,’ Lucas informed.
‘Sheet! Sheet!’ added Felix.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Emily agreed. ‘I did. It’s my fault. OK… where’s Rashid?’ She looked around the stage, mentally ticking off her children. Rashid definitely wasn’t among them.
‘Has anyone seen Rashid?’ Emily called, louder.
‘He said he was going to the shed for something for his Nazareth villager costume,’ Charlie said.
There was nothing in the shed that could be used for costumes. She had been through the shed again and got another padlock, after the Olivia Colman incident.
‘Dennis,’ Emily said, turning to her still-munching colleague. ‘Could you supervise?’
‘Well… I…’
‘Thanks.’
Emily left the hall and began the walk up the pathway to the playground, heading to the shed at the very perimeter of the boundary. She could already see Rashid and he wasn’t by the shed. Instead he was at the school gate, his striped villager costume blowing in the winter breeze. Emily quickened her pace. He was talking to someone. What was he doing? Out of her class and talking to someone outside of school? How had she not noticed? If Susan found out… As she got closer, she saw it wasn’t an adult he was conversing with, but a girl. She had long, dark hair, was sitting astride a bicycle and wearing the distinctive uniform of Stretton Park Senior.
‘Rashid,’ Emily said, arriving at the gate. ‘What are you doing out here?’
The boy turned around, a petrified expression on his face. ‘Miss, I was…’
‘I was giving him his books back,’ the teenager responded with all the confidence of a seasoned US president.
‘I see,’ Emily answered. ‘Thank you for that. And why do you have Rashid’s books exactly?’
‘I borrowed them,’ the girl answered. ‘There’s no law against lending books to people, is there? I think they call it a library.’
Oh, this girl had all the sass and Emily wasn’t going to be fooled for a minute. ‘GCSE books,’ she said, looking at the thick volumes in her student’s hands.
‘Yeah,’ the girl said. ‘Rashid’s gonna be a doctor.’
‘I’ve heard,’ Emily said. ‘So, what are you hiding from me under your coat there?’
Now the girl didn’t look quite so confident and Emily could swear she sucked in a breath and held her stomach in tight.
‘Nothing,’ the girl answered. ‘Had too much to eat at lunchtime, didn’t I?’
‘Undo your coat,’ Emily ordered.
‘What?!’ the girl said. ‘You can’t get me to do that.’
‘Either you undo the coat now, or I take you inside and we go and see the Head and you can explain to her why you’re outside Stretton Park Primary talking to one of my students.’
‘Miss Parker…’ Rashid began. ‘It’s my fault.’ His voice was wobbling, and he actually appeared tearful.
‘Open your jacket or, as well as my Head, I’ll be phoning yours,’ Emily threatened. ‘And I know Mr Walker very well.’ She didn’t actually know the head of Stretton Park Senior personally at all, but she did know he was well-known for being a beast on the local council…
The girl huffed and puffed and muttered close-to-expletives under her breath before she unzipped her coat and produced a four pack of bottles of alcopop, three sharing-sized bags of Kettle Chips and two packets of Wispa Bites. The price labels indicated these were from the shop across the road from her school. Emily put all this together in her mind and came to only the one conclusion.
‘Right, you’re both coming inside with me,’ Emily said to the girl.
‘But you said!’ the girl exclaimed.
‘It’s either inside with me now or I’m calling the police. And, I can’t guarantee that isn’t going to happen anyway.’
Rashid let out a sob.
Forty-One
Crowland Terrace, Canonbury, Islington
‘Argh!’ Emily exclaimed, looking at herself in the mirror of her bedroom. Nothing she was putting on to wear was right for this night with her parents. It went without saying that absolutely nothing was ever right for an evening with her parents, but she had long since given up trying to please her mother in the fashion stakes since she’d tried and apparently failed to rock a ‘must-have’ that Emma Willis had been pictured in.
There was a gentle knock on her door and she gasped, quickly slipping a jade green houndstooth patterned blouse on, hurrying to do up the buttons. Before she could quite get it fastened all the way, the door opened and Ray popped his head round.
‘Are you OK? Whoa… sorry.’ He started to close the door again.
‘No, it’s OK,’ Emily breathed, finishing the last button.
He opened the door again. ‘I heard you scream and I thought you were… I don’t know… under the wardrobe or something.’
‘No,’ Emily said. ‘Just, having a fashion crisis.’ She probably shouldn’t have admitted that. Men weren’t often interested in fashion. Well, Jonah and Allan were but that was different.
‘Really?’ Ray asked. ‘Because you always look great.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I mean, your clothes look great… and you do… in them.’
‘Oh… well… thanks.’ Now her cheeks were on fire and she was worried that she had missed a couple of buttons on the blouse. As that thought was running through her mind, her elbow caught the wardrobe door and it fell open, revealing her secret stash from a year’s worth of grieving. Three pairs of boots fell to the boards and the cupboard seemed to audibly sigh and expand, dresses and three-quarter-length 1950s trousers that had seemed such a good idea and perfect in the summer, now looked ridiculously whimsical.
‘Wow,’ Ray remarked, stepping into the room and surveying more clothes than a New Look warehouse. ‘If the wardrobe had fallen on you, you’d have been dead for sure.’
‘My mother would be horrified,’ Emily admitted, picking up one pair of the boots and admiring them. Bright red, shiny, thick black heel, 1960s. She was never likely to go anywhere to wear them.
‘Wouldn’t she be ultimately devastated?’ Ray suggested. ‘If you died.’
Emily smiled at him, putting the boots back in the wardrobe with difficulty. It took three hard shoves. ‘I think the shame that her daughter’s vintage obsession killed her would hit her harder than my actual demise.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Ray replied. He picked up one of the other pairs of boots and looked at them. ‘These are nice,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they’re my size though.’
‘So funny,’ Emily said, taking them from him.
‘So, you’ve got a date tonight?’ he asked, putting his hands into the pockets of a rather nice pair of dark grey trousers she hadn’t seen him wear before. Not that she noticed the clothes he wore on a daily basis or had visions of that night in the park when he’d blown on her fingers. Plus, there was Allan’s text message she had never known how to reply to.
I like Ray. I like him a lot. Live, my darling. Simon would want you to live.
‘A date with destiny,’ Emily answered with a sigh. ‘My parents.’
‘You don’t see them very often?’ Ray asked. ‘Do they live outside of London?’
‘Ha,’ Emily said
, unable to stop the laugh as she pushed her clothes collection back into the limited space. ‘No, they live in the thick of London, they just have very busy lives, so I see them once, maybe two or three times a year.’
‘I get it,’ Ray said, nodding.
‘It’s the same with your parents?’ Emily asked. ‘Because I’m used to Jonah and his parents who are virtually joined at the hip. They phone each other every day and text all the time and every Bank Holiday they’re arranging barbeques and sorting out who is going to marinade the chicken in what sauce etc. Jonah doesn’t get my non-relationship with my mother and father.’
‘Oh, I get it,’ Ray said nodding. He picked up the last pair of boots, running his hands over them as if deep in thought. ‘I just found out my dad has a new girlfriend.’
‘Oh, wow, Ray, I’m sorry.’ Emily swallowed. ‘Does your mum know?’
‘No… um… it’s not like that… it’s… well…’
Emily didn’t know quite what was coming next, but Ray seemed to be really struggling with it. She kept silent and waited.
‘My mum died.’
*
Ray’s eyes were on the boots, but his mind was back there, to when he was a child and the only constant in his life had been taken away so suddenly. Veronica Stone had been so far from perfect, some people might have thought it was a blessing she left when she did, but he had never thought that, ever. She was his mum. Yes, she had had faults – a myriad of them – but amid the misery and desperate ache inside her no one truly understood, there had been love. He might not have felt it 100 per cent of the time, but he had felt it.
‘Oh, Ray, I had no idea,’ Emily said.
He heard her feet move on the bare boards of floor and he instantly held out the boots to her, not wanting the sympathy he knew was coming.
‘Yeah, well, you know, it was a long time ago now. I just, I don’t know, I didn’t think my dad would date anyone else.’ He took a deep breath and finally raised his head to Emily’s kind, beautiful eyes. ‘I sound so pathetic right about now.’ He shook his head. ‘Her name’s Brenda. She seems nice.’ He didn’t know her at all. He’d had one conversation about kebabs. ‘I think she likes clothes too.’ If the sparkly dress was anything to go by.