A silence Nora felt as pain. ‘He didn’t tell me he was coming.’
‘Was just a fly-by.’
‘Is he okay?’
Ravi paused. Nora had once liked him, and he’d been a loyal friend to her brother. But, as with Joe, there was a barrier between them. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms. (He’d thrown his drumsticks on the floor of a rehearsal room and stropped out when Nora told him she was out of the band.) ‘I think he’s depressed.’
Nora’s mind grew heavier at the idea her brother might feel like she did.
‘He’s not himself,’ Ravi went on, anger in his voice. ‘He’s going to have to move out of his shoebox in Shepherd’s Bush. What with him not being able to play lead guitar in a successful rock band. Mind you, I’ve got no money either. Pub gigs don’t pay these days. Even when you agree to clean the toilets. Ever cleaned pub toilets, Nora?’
‘I’m having a pretty shit time too, if we’re doing the Misery Olympics.’
Ravi cough-laughed. A hardness momentarily shadowed his face. ‘The world’s smallest violin is playing.’
She wasn’t in the mood. ‘Is this about The Labyrinths? Still?’
‘It meant a lot to me. And to your brother. To all of us. We had a deal with Universal. Right. There. Album, singles, tour, promo. We could be Coldplay now.’
‘You hate Coldplay.’
‘Not the point. We could be in Malibu. Instead: Bedford. And so, no, your brother’s not ready to see you.’
‘I was having panic attacks. I’d have let everyone down in the end. I told the label to take you on without me. I agreed to write the songs. It wasn’t my fault I was engaged. I was with Dan. It was kind of a deal-breaker.’
‘Well, yeah. How did that work out?’
‘Ravi, that isn’t fair.’
‘Fair. Great word.’
The woman behind the counter gawped with interest.
‘Bands don’t last. We’d have been a meteor shower. Over before we started.’
‘Meteor showers are fucking beautiful.’
‘Come on. You’re still with Ella, aren’t you?’
‘And I could be with Ella and in a successful band, with money. We had that chance. Right there.’ He pointed to the palm of his hand. ‘Our songs were fire.’
Nora hated herself for silently correcting the ‘our’ to ‘my’.
‘I don’t think your problem was stage fright. Or wedding fright. I think your problem was life fright.’
This hurt. The words took the air out of her.
‘And I think your problem,’ she retaliated, voice trembling, ‘is blaming others for your shitty life.’
He nodded, as if slapped. Put his magazine back.
‘See you around, Nora.’
‘Tell Joe I said hi,’ she said, as he walked out of the shop and into the rain. ‘Please.’
She caught sight of the cover of Your Cat magazine. A ginger tabby. Her mind felt loud, like a Sturm und Drang symphony, as if the ghost of a German composer was trapped inside her mind, conjuring chaos and intensity.
The woman behind the counter said something to her she missed.
‘Sorry?’
‘Nora Seed?’
The woman – blonde bob, bottle tan – was happy and casual and relaxed in a way Nora no longer knew how to be. Leaning over the counter, on her forearms, as if Nora was a lemur at the zoo.
‘Yep.’
‘I’m Kerry-Anne. Remember you from school. The swimmer. Super-brain. Didn’t whatshisface, Mr Blandford, do an assembly on you once? Said you were going to end up at the Olympics?’
Nora nodded.
‘So, did you?’
‘I, um, gave it up. Was more into music . . . at the time. Then life happened.’
‘So what do you do now?’
‘I’m . . . between things.’
‘Got anyone, then? Bloke? Kids?’
Nora shook her head. Wishing it would fall off. Her own head. Onto the floor. So she never had to have a conversation with a stranger ever again.
‘Well, don’t hang about. Tick-tock tick-tock.’
‘I’m thirty-five.’ She wished Izzy was here. Izzy never put up with any of this kind of shit. ‘And I’m not sure I want—’
‘Me and Jake were like rabbits but we got there. Two little terrors. But worth it, y’know? I just feel complete. I could show you some pictures.’
‘I get headaches, with . . . phones.’
Dan had wanted kids. Nora didn’t know. She’d been petrified of motherhood. The fear of a deeper depression. She couldn’t look after herself, let alone anyone else.
‘Still in Bedford, then?’
‘Mm-hm.’
‘Thought you’d be one who got away.’
‘I came back. My mum was ill.’
‘Aw, sorry to hear that. Hope she’s okay now?’
‘I better go.’
‘But it’s still raining.’
As Nora escaped the shop, she wished there were nothing but doors ahead of her, which she could walk through one by one, leaving everything behind.
How to Be a Black Hole
Seven hours before she decided to die, Nora was in free fall and she had no one to talk to.
Her last hope was her former best friend Izzy, who was over ten thousand miles away in Australia. And things had dried up between them too.
She took out her phone and sent Izzy a message.
Hi Izzy, long time no chat. Miss you, friend. Would be WONDROUS to catch up. X
She added another ‘X’ and sent it.
Within a minute, Izzy had seen the message. Nora waited in vain for three dots to appear.
She passed the cinema, where a new Ryan Bailey film was playing tonight. A corny cowboy-romcom called Last Chance Saloon.
Ryan Bailey’s face seemed to always know deep and significant things. Nora had loved him ever since she’d watched him play a brooding Plato in The Athenians on TV, and since he’d said in an interview that he’d studied philosophy. She’d imagined them having deep conversations about Henry David Thoreau through a veil of steam in his West Hollywood hot tub.
‘Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,’ Thoreau had said. ‘Live the life you’ve imagined.’
Thoreau had been her favourite philosopher to study. But who seriously goes confidently in the direction of their dreams? Well, apart from Thoreau. He’d gone and lived in the woods, with no contact from the outside world, to just sit there and write and chop wood and fish. But life was probably simpler two centuries ago in Concord, Massachusetts, than modern life in Bedford, Bedfordshire.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
Maybe she was just really crap at it. At life.
Whole