Greatest Hits

by Laura Barnett

  PRAISE FOR THE VERSIONS OF US

  “The literary love child of One Day by David Nicholls and Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.”

  —FIONA WILSON, The Times

  “Excellent . . . Barnett’s clever and sophisticated plotting weaves the three outcomes seamlessly over a 60-year period . . . An affecting and thought-provoking read, The Versions of Us will keep you gripped until the tear-jerking conclusion.”

  —MERNIE GILMORE, Daily Express

  “Barnett renders an irresistible concept in sweet, cool prose—a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure book in which you don’t have to choose.”

  —HEPHZIBAH ANDERSON, Observer

  “Clever but not showy, romantic but not schmaltzy, it’s clear that the buzz around this book is justified.”

  —DEIRDRE O’BRIEN, Sunday Mirror

  “Truly enthralling—I simply adored this wonderful novel.”

  —JESSIE BURTON, author of The Miniaturist

  “It is an unusual and lovely thing to watch an entire romance develop across a novel, not just the fun early bits, or unpleasant midlife startings-over, or male midlife crises disguised as literary novels. Its very scope is a joy, the technical achievement seamlessly done, and the ending—all the endings—suitably affecting.”

  —JENNY COLGAN, Guardian

  “A classic summer read. One Day meets Mad Men.”

  —Metro

  “I absolutely loved [The Versions of Us]. It’s so elegantly and beautifully written . . . a really wonderful book.”

  —ESTHER FREUD, author of Mr. Mac and Me

  “Well written, deftly crafted and constantly surprising . . . an utterly convincing love story about two people destined to be together somehow, no matter what.”

  —KATE SAUNDERS, The Times

  “The tantalising ‘what if?’ theme keeps all three stories going at a cracking pace. It is to her credit that youthful Barnett invokes the power of love and loss among both the young and old with equal tenderness.”

  —CHRISTENA APPLEYARD, Daily Mail

  “Both brilliant and astonishingly good.”

  —ELIZABETH BUCHAN, author of I Can’t Begin to Tell You

  “A deeply moving and emotional story that has the ability to make you evaluate your own life.”

  —Stylist

  “Everyone’s talking about The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett. Eva and Jim’s first meeting has three possible outcomes. Barnett interweaves the resulting love stories with their beautifully drawn characters into an elegant, touching tapestry.”

  —FANNY BLAKE, Woman & Home

  A clever, romantic debut.”

  —Grazia

  “An exciting and clever novel. It marks the emergence of a major talent in literary fiction. I can’t wait to see what Barnett does next.”

  —VIV GROSKOP, Red magazine

  “Thought-provoking and moving.”

  —CATHY RENTZENBRINK, Prima

  “Each strand is distinct—and equally captivating.”

  —Good Housekeeping

  “Written with intelligence and warmth.”

  —NATASHA COOPER, TLS

  Europa Editions

  214 West 29th St.

  New York NY 10001

  info@europaeditions.com

  www.europaeditions.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2017 by Laura Barnett

  First publication 2019 by Europa Editions

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Lyrics by Laura Barnett and Kathryn Williams

  (Except ‘I Wrote You a Love Song’ and ‘Living Free’ by Laura Barnett, Kathryn Williams and Romeo Stodart; ‘Road of Shadows’ by Laura Barnett, Kathryn Williams and Polly Paulusma; ‘Home’ by Laura Barnett, Kathryn Williams and Michele Stodart)

  Quote from Stevie Nicks is printed with the kind permission of Stevie Nicks.

  From MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM by August Wilson, copyright © 1985 by August Wilson. Used by permission of New American Library, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  Cover photo: © Lucy Lambriex/DigitalVision/Getty Images

  ISBN 9781609455248

  Laura Barnett

  GREATEST HITS

  GREATEST HITS

  For Andy, of course

  Each song is a lifetime. These songs are the memories.

  —STEVIE NICKS

  You don’t sing to feel better. You sing ’cause that’s a way of understanding life.

  —AUGUST WILSON, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

  So it wasn’t a failure after all! It was going to be all right now—her party. It had begun. It had started. But it was still touch and go.

  —VIRGINIA WOOLF, Mrs. Dalloway

  8 A.M.

  The day has begun slowly, gently, with a steady creeping into life. The dawn hazy—thin bands of cloud lifting into a pale blue sky—and the sun low and yellowish, promising warmth but delivering only deep, angled shadows.

  A series of planes has made a steady procession up towards nothingness, or the unidentifiable place over the English Channel where each, as if by some ancient instinct, will turn its nose towards the Atlantic and pick up speed.

  In Cass Wheeler’s garden, partitioned from the Tunbridge Road by a series of high dry-stone walls, two rangy, sharp-faced foxes have emerged from their den behind the shed and curled up, doglike, in a patch of sun. At the narrow, blind turning that leads to her house—its sign, Home Farm, almost entirely obscured by thick coils of ivy that Cass hasn’t cared to remove—a man, new to the village, has paused while out walking his dog, drawn by the faint outline of a memory. And then, after a moment, he has walked on, re-immersing himself in the shape-shifting cares of the moment, the dog shadowing his heels.

  Cass has known none of this. She has been rising reluctantly from sleep, ignoring her alarm, chasing the vague, receding image of a dream. A hall somewhere—not a large room; a school auditorium, perhaps. Shining parquet and the smell of chalk. Black plastic chairs arranged in expectant rows. Silence, measured by the metronomic tick of a wall-clock. The uncomfortable, tightening sense that there is something else she ought to be doing, somewhere else she ought to be, and she can’t for the life of her remember what it might be.

  The alarm shrills out again. She lets it ring, opening her eyes, abandoning the ghostly image of the hall. Here is her bedroom, her dressing-table, the soft pressure of her cat, Otis, stretching and yawning at her feet. Here is the pillow, cool against her cheek, which, on other mornings, has carried the weight of Larry’s head; from which he has turned, on waking, and gathered her to him, and she has thrilled to the strangeness of his long body, his warm hands, after so many years of sleeping alone.

  She thinks, Where is Larry?

  She thinks, Chicago.

  She thinks, I could forget today, couldn’t I? Just lie here, under the covers. Draw them up over my head and sleep.

  She thinks, No. You have done too much sleeping. Today is the day you wake up.

  Downstairs in her kitchen, she makes coffee. Toast. Stands at the window eating—she can still hear her mother’s voice: “Sit down at once. Anyone would think you were born in a barn”—and watches a pair of foxes on the lawn, black-nosed and long-tailed, sleeping under a weak beam of sun. One wakes, lifts his head, and looks back at her. His eyes are impassive, dark-pupilled; there is, she thinks, something uncommonly hum
an about his stare. She looks away first, sips her coffee. When she turns back to the window, both the foxes have disappeared.

  Kim has left a note on the counter; she must have written it after Cass had gone up to bed. She’d stayed for dinner, made lasagne. How often, Cass had thought, have I sat and eaten Kim’s lasagne, and yet I never tire of it? Well, that wasn’t quite true: on one of the worst days, Cass had taken a tray of lasagne from the fridge and the stench of it, that oozing, gelatinous gloop, had suddenly been more than she could bear. She had let the tray drop from her fingers, left the whole broken mess where it fell. Kim, later, had simply cleaned it up, and said nothing more about it. They can laugh about it now—had done so last night, as Kim had placed two steaming plates on the dining-room table.

  “Won’t smash these, will you, Cass?” she had said, and Cass had poured them both a glass of wine, and loved this woman: the woman who has seen so very much and never flinched from it; the woman who could stand to look at her even when Cass couldn’t stand to look at herself.

  Hope you had a good sleep, Kim has written. I’ll be round about three. On the mobile if you need me. Callum’s calling at ten about the masters—he’ll try the studio line. The caterers will be there at five, but I’ll deal with them. Otherwise, you’re on your own. Enjoy it, Cass, all right? There’s no hurry. Take your time. Kx.

  That was a song, wasn’t it? Cass can almost hear it, as if from a radio, turned down low. A deep-bellied chord, a man’s voice. Take your time, girl. It’s only you and me. Whose was it? Not Ivor’s—not that reedy, fluting tenor. She closes her eyes; she can feel the answer lurking in a distant, shadowed corner of her mind. That’s how it is, so often, now: the clear Technicolor of memory fading to sepia, recollection a deliberate act. An act of deliberation. Take your time, girl. Damn it, it won’t come.

  Cass slams her mug down, sending a cool sluice of coffee spattering across the worktop. Otis, methodically washing himself at the window, shoots her a disdainful glance.

  Forget it, she thinks. It probably wasn’t any good anyway.

  In her bedroom, as she dresses, the answer suddenly appears.

  A pub—dingy, gleaming with horse brasses, men glowering over glasses of stout. A man with a guitar, pale and thin-faced, curly hair creeping down over the collar of his jacket. Ivor beside her: the tall, beloved outline of him, leaning down to whisper in her ear. We’re up next, Cassie. Don’t be nervous.

  But she had been nervous, had felt the fear washing through her with each sip of shandy. She had wanted that song to last for ever—Take your time, girl, the man had sung, and she had wanted to say, No, you take your time—just keep on playing, and don’t ever stop. But he had stopped, and Ivor had placed a hand on her shoulder, and she had reached down for her guitar. The men and the walls and the horse brasses, all of it had seemed to turn and buckle around her, and if she could have turned and run, she would have done so, and not looked back. But Ivor had pushed her forward, gently, and the fat man with the black, tufted beard had put down his beer and stood up on the stage.

  “Ivor Tait and Cass Wheeler,” he’d announced to those who cared to listen, and then there had been no turning back.

  What had they sung that night? She can’t recall. “Scarborough Fair,” probably. Something by Joan Baez, perhaps, if she’d been feeling particularly brave. And she had felt brave, in the end: her fear had evaporated, as it almost always did, in the moment she sat down on the stool, settled the reassuring bulk of her guitar upon her knee. Then it had begun: their slow, dancing courtship, over and under, under and over, as the strings of their guitars bowed and curtsied to the will of their darting fingers.

  Slipping on her shoes, Cass thinks, My God, I loved Ivor then. How could I not?

  She opens the curtains to the morning. Across the garden, the tiered glass and concrete of the studio roof is catching the sunlight, casting long, geometric patterns across the lawn. She had designed it herself on graph paper, accurately measured: the architect, Luke Bennett, looking over her plans, had peered at her over his black-framed glasses and said, “Impressive.”

  Anna, ten years old—gap-toothed and tousle-haired, her knees thin and bony below her cut-off denim shorts—had said, “Wow, Mum. It looks like the Starship Enterprise.”

  Anna. Cass stands for a moment at the window, one hand on her dressing-table, steadying herself. Down on the lawn, one of the foxes emerges from behind the shed, lifts his snout to the air, and sniffs.

  She thinks, Now. I am ready.

  The studio is cool and calm, quiet but for the monitors’ steady electric hum. Callum and Gav have left the live room tidy: coiled cables, folded mike-stands, removed beer-bottles and ashtrays—not that there’s so much of any of that now. Even Gav’s only vice is working, in the course of each session, through a small packet of Golden Virginia Light. Cass has grown used, in recent months, to seeing the shadow of him outlined against the sliding doors to the terrace, hand cupped around his latest slender, hand-rolled cigarette.

  The computers in the control room are at rest, blank-screened and silent. The console sleeps. Beside it, on the desk, lies a sheet of paper lined with notes in Callum’s angular, boyish hand. “When Morning Comes”—boost cello going into chorus by 3dB. “Gethsemane”—repeat coda to fade. Javier—play softer.

  Cass smiles. He’s a good man, Callum: careful, thoughtful, unlike some of the producers she’s known. It was Alan who’d suggested him for the new record: Callum Sutherland had, he said, faced down a few demons of his own.

  “Demons?” she’d repeated, smiling at the thought of them, swish-tailed, maniacally grinning.

  “Well,” Alan had said, smiling back, “you know what I mean.” Cass had known exactly what he meant—had seen it for herself when Alan had brought Callum to Home Farm for dinner. He was thirty-eight, good-looking in a stubbled, brooding sort of way, with an actress wife, Andrea (he’d brought her, too), three Grammys, and a shiny new “Producer of the Year” award from the Guild.

  His last job had been with an American pop starlet—or whatever they were called these days—whose album cover pictured her in a skintight white rubber suit. Looking at it—they were in the garden, smoking, “talking business” while Alan poured Andrea another glass of wine—Cass had been unable to conceal her distaste.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Callum said. “But there’s more to her than you’d think. She’s strong-willed—knows what she wants, definitely doesn’t take any crap. And you should have heard her singing voice before they brought me in.”

  “Fair enough.” Cass drew deeply on her cigarette. “At least you’re honest.”

  “Always,” he said. “Learnt that the hard way.”

  Later, over coffee, she’d invited Callum to her next rehearsal session with the band. A few days after that, she’d told Alan that this might, indeed, be the man she was looking for. The man who would treat her gently, and her new songs even more so.

  “All right,” Alan had replied, studiedly casual, reaching into the pocket of his jeans for his mobile phone. He was glued to the thing, these days—said it was impossible to imagine ever having managed anyone, or anything, without it. And yet they had got along just fine without any of that for so long. Letters and telegrams and long-distance phone calls; LPs and hit parades and the slick-haired kids queuing outside the record shops. It was a different world now. What was the phrase Callum had used to describe it? An analogue world. That was the world she belonged to; who knew why this shiny new one should have any use for her?

  Watching Alan’s stubby, calloused fingers moving with uncustomary grace across the glass screen of his phone, Cass had felt the old fear rising, asserting itself. Her irrelevance. Her unimportance. Her new songs, so unexpected, so precious to her, as quiet and timorous as whispers, passing unnoticed amid the brash, ruthless, deafening clamour of the young.

  She had spoken none of this aloud
, but Alan had looked up, met her eyes with his.

  “You don’t have to do this, Cass,” he’d said softly. “You don’t have to do any of this. The greatest-hits record, the new tracks—all of it can wait. Or go to hell, if you want it to. It’s up to you. It’s always been up to you.”

  She’d held his gaze for one second, two, three.

  “No,” she’d said. “I do want this. I need it, Alan. Please.”

  At the open door to the listening-room, Cass waits for a moment. Alan and Kim have arranged it all for her: the stack of records on the table; the bottles of San Pellegrino arranged neatly in the fridge; the fresh mugs warming on the coffee machine. On top of the pile of albums, she finds another note from Kim. Happy listening. Like I said, take your time. Kx.

  Beside it is a square white envelope. Cass slides a finger under the seal, draws out a Henry Moore sculpture printed on glossy card: bulbous, eerily smooth. Two women seated; beside one of them, a child, her hand resting on the woman’s knee. Inside, in his oversized, square-angled hand, Larry has written, Today, Cass, find a way to forgive her. And then—please—find a way to forgive yourself.

  He must have left the card with Kim, or posted it to her, from Chicago. Cass stands still, the card in her hand, picturing Larry’s face. It had been to him, first, that she had described the idea that was gradually forming in her mind, assuming the shape and colour of firm intention. She was thinking, she’d told him, of putting together a compilation of her greatest hits, to accompany the new material. Not, she’d said, the obvious songs—the label had put that record out long ago—but the songs that meant the most to her. The songs that tracked the arc of a lifetime.