SING (Like No One's Listening) Read online

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To my three pals,

  and also to you, if you’ve ever

  felt so nervous you couldn’t.

  CHAPTER 1

  If this was the opening sequence of a musical, I’d be stepping up to these doors with a leather suitcase in each hand and a smile on my face, about to break into song about what a wonderful morning it is, or the fact that the hills are alive, or something equally as cheesy.

  But it’s not a musical.

  There’s no orchestral swell, no birds tweeting. Only the grumbling underscore of traffic on Old Compton Street, a faint whiff of car fumes and bacon and, given that I came here alone, the excruciating absence of anyone to sing to. Only the thud-thud of my terrified heart to keep me company.

  The vast, pale brick building sits elegantly on a corner of Soho Square. My ears pick up a mixture of classical piano and hip-hop beats from within, making me shiver with excitement. To my right there’s a steel plaque, which reads:

  Duke’s Academy of Performing Arts

  Formerly The King’s School

  Founded 1854

  In smaller writing underneath I can just make out another sentence:

  It was only in the theatre that I lived.

  Oscar Wilde

  No pressure, then.

  OK, time to focus. This is not just the audition of my life. I’m auditioning for my life. Checking the time on my phone, I take a breath and step through the tall doors.

  Omigod, it’s huge in here. There are students everywhere, milling around, stretching, gossiping . . . they’re even on the walls – adorning the white painted atrium in signed, framed ten-by-eights ranging from the 1920s to the present day. There are some names I recognize; lots I don’t. A wealth of writers, directors, actors and dancers look down at me gloatingly with their glassy half-smiles.

  I guess only the best students make it on to the Duke’s Wall of Fame. Seeing their success makes my throat contract in an actual gulp.

  How long have I got? Four minutes. Just time to slip to the toilet and go through my song. There’s a student at the front desk waiting to sign people in.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Er, Nettie.’

  She scans the register.

  ‘Sorry – it’s Antoinette,’ I correct myself. ‘I don’t really use my full name.’

  ‘No worries.’ She finds my name and looks back up in a double take. ‘I’ll change it.’

  I thank her and squeeze past before she has a chance to ask me anything else that might make her realize who I am.

  There are doors leading to enormous studios on each side of the foyer. I pass two on my left: one housing a street-dance class and the other a musical theatre lesson. I pause at the second studio window just as a boy is hitting the last few notes of ‘Bring Him Home’, the rest of the class watching, spellbound. Wow. He’s amazing. Proper jaw-droppingly good. I can’t help wondering if that’ll be me one day, here at Duke’s, learning my craft, owning it, being generally brilliant . . .

  OK, enough. Daydreaming won’t get you a place here.

  I tear myself away from the studio window and make my way through to the changing rooms. The adjacent toilet is white-tiled and clean. It’s deserted. I lock the door and sing full out at my reflection. It goes OK, but God, I’m nervous. Maybe I should sing the other one. It’s probably easier.

  I start to gather my things together.

  My phone bleeps with a voicemail. Absent-mindedly I put it to my ear and haul my bag over my shoulder.

  ‘Hi, Nettie. I’m in town—’

  The tiles on the toilet wall go blurry.

  ‘Did you say you needed shower gel?’

  The shock of her voice makes me retch.

  ‘Call me if you think of anything else. I love you.’

  Mum.

  My knees buckle. I wildly grab the sink for support, dropping my phone on the hard floor in the process. It lands with a loud crack.

  Mum . . .

  I double over and throw up into the toilet.

  . . . How?

  I scrabble on the floor for my phone. The screen is a spider web of smashed glass but I can still see the list of voicemails, and there she is, right at the top. This isn’t possible. This isn’t possible.

  I go to swallow but it kills. My head’s too full of blood. I’m sure it’s going to explode. I’m going to self-decapitate and bleed to death here in the loo, like some sort of teen horror movie opening sequence.

  I try to steady myself.

  It doesn’t make any sense. Mum died over a year ago. Why have I got a voicemail from her?

  Is she . . .?

  Maybe it’s all been a mistake. Maybe she recovered somewhere in secret. Maybe it’s all been a long, hideous dream. Maybe . . .

  This is ridiculous. Maybe-ing doesn’t help – it just makes it worse when you come back to reality. God knows, I’m the expert.

  Get a grip. You can’t go to pieces – not here, not now.

  I look in the mirror, struggling to take a deep breath as I wipe vomit from my lips. It’s just some sort of technical blip – a mistake by the phone company. It’s got stuck in the ether and been delivered late – like, fourteen months late. That’s all.

  I cannot let this affect me. Not today. It’s too important. Just breathe.

  I can’t, though.

  I can’t breathe.

  I was doing so well. Today was going to be difficult without Mum, I knew that. But I was holding it together – at least I was until I heard her voice. Now I’m winded, mugged. My throat’s swollen with raw emotion and acid-burn and my eyes are stinging.

  Oh no, not now. Don’t cry now. Get it together, Nettie.

  I press the corners of my eyes with shaking fingers and head back into the foyer, where a man in a spotted cravat pokes his head out of the audition room.

  ‘Ah, Antoinette. Here you are. We called you a moment ago.’

  ‘Sorry, I—’

  ‘Not to worry. We’d like to see you now, if you’re ready.’

  I follow him into the studio, barely able to focus.

  ‘So, what have you brought to sing for us?’ says the man. He leaves me in the centre of the room and goes to sit down with the rest of the panel.

  ‘Er . . . I’ve got “I’m Not Afraid of Anything” . . .’ I falter. I’m surprised no one laughs. I must look literally afraid of everything right now. The room spins.

  ‘Haven’t you got anything else?’ says a woman next to him.

  I try to focus on her face, which right now is just a white blur inside a blackish-grey bob.

  ‘We’ve heard that one seven times already today.’ Her voice is cold and clipped.

  ‘Oh. Um, I’ve got—’

  ‘Well, whatever it is, let’s hear it. I need a break from the mind-numbing tedium,’ says the voice. I notice the echo it makes through the vast studio. Good acoustics, Mum would have said.

  Mum.
>
  I freeze. My feet won’t move; I’m stuck in some sort of awful spotlight I can’t step out of.

  ‘Everything all right?’ asks the man.

  ‘Uh, sure.’ Dazed, I force myself over to the pianist to give him my sheet music. As I walk slowly back to the centre of the studio and wait for the introduction, I know something’s still not right. I’m unsteady on my feet and my throat’s small, like I can’t get enough air to my lungs.

  Mum should’ve been here today. I wore that dress she gave me for my seventeenth – the one with the flowers. I picked her favourite song. I needed her. But . . . not like this. How could this happen, now of all times?

  The first line is audible, but only just. My voice is thin; reedy. With every breath it gets worse.

  By the end of the first chorus, it’s down to little more than a whisper. What’s happening to me?

  ‘You’ll never get in.’ My grandmother’s last words to me as I left the house this morning float up to the forefront of my mind. ‘I don’t know why you’re bothering. You’ll never make it. Look where show business got your mother.’

  ‘I don’t care. It’s what I want. Mum wanted me to go. She was proud of me – not that you’d ever know.’

  Mum.

  I don’t even have the energy to be angry any more. I’m drained of everything right now, except the overwhelming grief throbbing through my chest.

  The pianist comes to a halt and I realize I’ve stopped singing altogether.

  ‘Nettie, would you like a glass of water?’ says the man.

  ‘I—’

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. I just—’

  I just heard my dead mum on a voicemail and now I can’t sing is the problem. But I can’t say that, can I? Tear tracks prickle my jawline and I rub them away violently. The panel must think my nerves have got the better of me, standing in the middle of the studio and weeping silently with no explanation.

  ‘Nettie?’

  I mouth ‘I’m sorry’ and run out.

  The envelope sits on the table for a good half an hour before I have the courage to approach it. The gilt lettering on the back glares at me, daring me to rip it open.

  There’s no way I’ve got in after my fiasco of an audition, but this moment is the last time I’ll ever not know for sure. Until I open that envelope, I can still imagine how my life would be if I got in, still hope for that chance to start building my life again.

  There’s no plan B. I didn’t apply for uni because I was so set on musical theatre, so busy grieving for Mum that I forgot to make a backup plan. I’ll be stuck living with Auntie – I have to call her ‘Auntie’ because apparently ‘Grandmother’ is ageing – until I’m as old as her and she’s even older, rotting in this decaying townhouse in south-east London forever.

  I pick up the envelope. It’s only small – surely if I’d got a place there would be loads of information inside? I tear it open, bracing myself for the inevitable. When I read the first sentence, I can barely breathe.

  Dear Miss Delaney-Richardson,

  We are delighted to be able to offer you a place at Duke’s Academy of Performing Arts on the Musical Theatre course, commencing this September.

  I see the word ‘delighted’ and the rest of the letter is a blur.

  Please see our student portal for a list of all available accommodation, local information and a list of your uniform requirements.

  I’ve lost concentration. The letter goes on, I think. Something about Miss Duke requesting that places be accepted immediately and some more info on how to pay deposits.

  Delighted.

  But . . . how?

  My audition was terrible. I mean, truly awful. I didn’t even stay long enough to do the dance and drama classes, and my singing . . .. I hastily turn over the page, wary there might be some kind of addendum to the letter saying that it’s all been a joke. But that’s it: the letter, a list of useful links and a couple of maps marked with all-night chemists and emergency dentists.

  Did I get in because of Mum? She trained there as a dancer years ago. Maybe they recognized my name and thought I must be some shit-hot prima. They’ll be disappointed.

  Look. Who cares how I got in – I got in. I’m free. I get to leave this place and all the horrible memories and start a new life doing what I love.

  I’ll prove myself worthy of a place when I get there. I’m going to make it as a singer.

  Except for one small problem.

  I can’t sing anymore.

  CHAPTER 2

  My new room in the halls is small and basic. There’s a tiny bed, a miniscule wardrobe, a desk, a chair and a chest of drawers, all in the same pale beech veneer. The walls are a bland off-white and the only light comes from a single central bulb with a spherical paper lampshade. Not exactly the Palladium, but to me the stark, colourless room is a blank page. A fresh start. A New World.

  I reach inside the open suitcase on the bed and pull out a single red rose pressed in a frame. It’s the first flower Mum ever received onstage. Leaning it up against the wall on the desk, I’m transported, my mind watching from the wings as she curtseys to the roaring crowd and scoops it up elegantly. It’s weird – lately I only seem to be able to see her from behind. I can’t seem to picture her face. It’s like I’ve tried so many times I’ve worn out the memory.

  Mum died in May last year. It was a complete shock; well, to me, anyway. She never told me she’d had cancer before. This one was secondary. And it shot her down in six weeks. Six weeks. We’d barely had time to get over the diagnosis before she was gone and I was suddenly organizing the funeral, clearing out the house so it could be rented and moving in with a grandmother I didn’t even know. Without realizing it I’d become this adult with a load of responsibilities, when what I felt like was an orphan without my mum. My family.

  It had been just Mum and me for as long as I can remember. No one else. Being without her was devastating. But I was coping. I thought I was, anyway.

  Until the audition.

  My voice didn’t come back for three weeks after that awful day. A rush of shame hit me every time I thought about it, all wrapped up in a grief that felt as new as the day I lost Mum. The four walls of my room were all I saw; surviving on the breadsticks and raw vegetables that my grandmother left outside the door (God forbid she’d ever give me real food), unable to speak, unable to leave. I passed the time by watching old MGM movies on my phone, or staring out of the window at Crystal Palace Park, trying to remember the view from my old window in Woodland Road that looked down the steep hill towards the city. My grandmother’s townhouse in Sydenham couldn’t feel further from home, despite being just on the other side of the park.

  At night I put Billie Holiday on the record player and curled up on my bed and cried; big, silent sobs that started in the pit of my stomach and shook my whole body as they escaped.

  My friends tried calling, messaging; I even heard them turn up on the doorstep one day; but I didn’t talk to them. Eventually they stopped trying.

  I couldn’t talk. Every time I tried, my throat went hard, just like it did in the audition – like muscle memory or something. I was terrified I’d never make another sound.

  Ironically, the one thing my grandmother did do for me was bring my speaking voice back. After three weeks in my room, I managed to get dressed and go downstairs, only to find her sitting there calmly like it wasn’t strange to see me out of my room for the first time in nearly a month – like there was nothing wrong. I almost laughed.

  ‘You look thinner.’ She eyed my protruding collarbone approvingly.

  ‘I’m going to school, Auntie,’ I said, deliberately ignoring her comment. My voice was small, strained. But there, at least.

  ‘Take your key.’ She looked back to her newspaper.

  ‘To pick up the rest of my things,’ I said.

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘The things I should have picked up after my last A-Level exam?’

/>   Still nothing from her, but I could hear my voice getting louder.

  ‘You know, the exam I didn’t even sit?’

  ‘Don’t take that tone with me, Antoinette.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  I still had one exam to go after my Duke’s audition. I never made it into school to sit it. I overheard her talking to the school office when they phoned to find out where I was. ‘In her bedroom, sulking,’ she told them.

  I’d lived with her long enough to know there was literally no point trying to get a reaction, but the rage frothing up inside me was nourishing my broken voice and I wasn’t about to let that go. She scowled up at me, her tightly pulled skin crinkling at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘Maybe if you hadn’t banned me from coming to your Duke’s audition—’

  ‘Is that it?’ I spat out a mirthless laugh. ‘You still haven’t forgiven me for not taking you? You’re hilarious.’

  I’d never argued back to her like this before. It was exhilarating. ‘I was merely pointing out that perhaps if you’d applied yourself better in ballet, you could have gone for the dancers’ course,’ Auntie said. ‘You didn’t need to storm out without me.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a ballerina,’ I said.

  ‘Rubbish. Of course you do. It’s in your blood. My mother did it; I did it; even your mother did it, before she went and threw everything away.’

  ‘What do you mea—’

  ‘I’ve told you, I won’t talk about it, Antoinette.’ She closed her eyes theatrically and inhaled deeply, like some sort of generic GIF of Bette Davis, only without the fag.

  ‘You’re a joke, you know that?’

  ‘Antoinette—’

  I’d slammed the door before she’d even finished her sentence.

  We barely spoke over the summer. I got a job in a bar and worked as many shifts as I could. I’d had to give up my old job singing in a restaurant because every time I tried to sing, my throat closed up and I started shaking uncontrollably.

  It wasn’t exactly a fond farewell, either. Sensing another argument brewing, I waited until she’d gone out for the evening before I left for the halls.

  By the time I’d done two trips on the train and the tube with my stuff and lugged it all up to my room and unpacked, it was nearly midnight. She never even called.