‘I couldn’t give a crap where you were born, Sally Howlett. I just know that I want to be on your team.’
I grinned madly. ‘And I want to be on yours,’ I said.
Julian looked thoughtful for a minute, then took my right hand. He fiddled with the big ugly rock that I still wore on my finger. Tiny warm needles of yellow light reflected from its surface on our faces and I remembered sitting on the swings in the park, holding a buttercup under Fi’s chin to see if she liked butter. ‘I bought this for you,’ he said, sliding the ring around.
‘Eh? No, you didn’t, I got it …’ I dug around in my memory. ‘I got it at the party. The Party. Which you kind of ruined,’ I added, in the direction of Fiona’s tree.
‘I know.’ Julian was grinning mischievously. ‘We all had to bring presents, remember? You forgot. You wrote something ridiculous on a Post-it note.’
‘Hmm. Yes.’
Julian removed the ring from my finger.
‘We all had to buy presents,’ he continued. ‘And I bought this one. For you.’
I was confused. ‘But how did you know? That I’d choose it?’
‘Because I told everyone else that I’d kill them if they took it.’
Something began to dawn on me.
Julian watched me for a moment, letting me stew in uncertainty, then kissed me again. Gently, barely touching my lips. ‘I was going to ask you to marry me,’ he said, quite casually. ‘But Fi fucked that plan up good and proper.’ We smiled shyly, knowing she would have allowed the joke.
‘So unfortunately all you got was a hideous comedy ring. I was going to take you to a jeweller’s,’ he added. ‘If you’d said yes.’
He tried to shove the ring on his own finger and got it as far as his first knuckle.
‘I love you for keeping it on all this time.’ Julian smiled. He turned the ring over in his palm, flecking our faces with little spots of light. ‘Maybe a little part of you still wanted us to work.’
I stared at him, marvelling at this unforeseen twist in our story. ‘Wow!’
Julian stared out at Manhattan. ‘You’ve made me happier than anyone has ever made me,’ he said. ‘Our team is the most important thing in my life.’
‘Mine too!’ I was radiantly happy. Even with the seagull poo by my foot. I was so happy it almost hurt.
‘So … Yes. So I think I’ll just ask you to marry me,’ he decided. ‘I’m not getting down on one knee. It’d be a bit knobbish. And there’s too much seagull shit around here.’
I nodded vehemently. ‘Knobbish. Seagull shit.’
‘Oh, hang on.’ He glanced at the sapling swaying in the breeze. ‘No, Fiona says I do have to get down on one knee.’ Sighing comically, he poked around in the sand to find a safe spot. Once installed, he grinned up at me, brandishing the ring. ‘You’re everything that’s good and funny and brilliant in my life, Sally Howlett. Can we make that official?’
I turned to the tree. ‘Do you approve?’ I asked it. I heard Fiona’s response, clear as day, and started laughing. I laughed and laughed, then found I was crying, warm fat tears of absolute joy. I plopped tears all over Julian’s smiling face.
‘She said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sally!” ’
He sniggered. ‘That sounds about right.’
I looked him, square in the eye, and smiled and cried and laughed and made strange happy noises a bit like a cow mooing. ‘Yes, Julian Bell! I would like to join the team.’
Julian put the ring on my finger and pulled me down into the sand with him. We kissed and hugged until a dog came and did a wee on Julian’s trainer, and then we lay on our backs and watched the clouds slide by, each one lined sharply with brilliant sun.
Acknowledgements
Without the great army of people who helped me research and write this book, I would have written maybe ten pages and then run off and hidden on a remote island until Penguin forgot I owed them a book. So many brilliant people opened up their wonderful musical and theatrical worlds, luckily, and in so doing they saved my skin. Heartfelt thanks to all! But especially …
Elizabeth Gottschalk and Adam Music for getting me started with opera.
Garsington Young Artists Programme for allowing me to come and watch Magic Flute rehearsals.
The wonderful British Youth Opera for allowing me to be present all through rehearsals of their fantastic production of The Bartered Bride. Everyone made me feel welcome, nobody threw me out of their dressing room and when I saw the finished production I finally understood why opera is such a magical, wonderful thing.
Special thanks to the very talented and inspiring soprano Katy Crompton.
To Frazer Scott for becoming my singing teacher (!).
Thank you to my great grandparents for their own contribution to the opera world, and for sparking my curiosity.
To Rachael Wright and Lindsey Kelk for New York education and also Julian Ingle for sheltering me and The Man during Hurricane Sandy. That was crazy.
Thanks to Bridget Foster at the Royal Opera House for letting me poke around the wonderful wig and makeup department.
To Lynette Mauro for inviting me into the National Theatre’s magical wardrobe depratment.
Thanks to my amazing agent, Lizzy Kremer (‘Agent of the Year, every year’), who is so brilliant I still can’t quite believe she is mine. Or I am hers. Or something like that.
To Harriet Moore for being fantastically helpful with almost everything, Laura West for getting me Stateside, and Tine Nielssen and Stella Giatrakou – best of luck to you both.
The team at Penguin have been especially brilliant this year, which has been (I hope) a rather more unusual year in my life as a writer. Thanks to Celine Kelly for being a wonderful, clever and very diplomatic editor. To Mari Evans for her brilliant input and then Maxine Hitchcock for taking this novel by storm! Liz Smith, Francesca Russell and Joe Yule for putting me out there into the world, and Lee Motley for my beautiful book jackets. Anna Derkacz, Sophie Overment, Isabel Coburn, Roseanne Bantick and Samantha Fanaken for selling me so successfully. Nick Lowndes for pulling together my books into the beautiful things they become and Hazel Orme for rigorous copy-editing! Thank you to Lyn, Brian and Caroline Walsh for being my A team. I love you all very much. To George for looking after me and being the best thing in the world. My friends – all of you, thank you for getting me back to health. X
And to my wonderful, loyal, batty, brilliant readers who’ve really had my back this year. You guys and all the wonderful bloggers and reviewers are the reason I have a job and I’m so grateful to you all.
And I guess my final thank you goes to all of the composers, singers and musicians of times present and anterior who’ve blown my mind with their works. Sometimes, when I was meant to be writing, I’d just listen to arias and duets and bawl my eyes out.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published 2014
Copyright © Lucy Robinson, 2014
Illustration by Leeman © Lemonade Agency
All rights reserved
Extract from Look Down from the musical LES MISÉRABLES
By Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg
Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg
Lyrics by Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Herbert Kretzmer
Publisher: Alain Boublil Music Limited/Editions Musicales Alain Boublil
Copyright © 1980, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 2012
Lyrics printed with permission
Extract from Empty Chairs at Empty Tables from the musical LES MISÉRABLES
By Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg
Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg
Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer and Alain Boublil
Publisher: Alain Boublil Music Limited
Copyright © 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 2012
Lyrics printed with permission
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes
ISBN: 978-1-405-91159-7
The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me Page 38
