Clearly the sane answer is no.
“Er…yes?”
Mollified as quickly as he became enraged, Clarence taps my tender snout with his finger. It goes ting! like a bell. I cringe but the pain instantly disappears. Clarence flutters back to the windowsill, resuming his position centre-stage, hands clasped behind his back, chest puffed out like a small army general. With wings.
“But what are you doing here? What destiny?”
“As I was saying, you and I are bound together, Candy Caine. I have been charged with the task of getting you out of this…”
He looks about him, clutching for a word that will accurately encapsulate the hopeless grimitude of my freezing box room on a friendless Saturday morning.
“…this poky little life of yours and getting you one that fits.”
“A life that fits?” I ask, sarcastically. Who does this…person think he is?
Clarence B Major meets my glare, returning a look as cool and clear as iced water.
“Well? Haven’t you ever felt that your life was too small?”
“I…” I leap into speech, ready to tell him how wrong he is. Only he’s not. Every single day I have dreamed of something bigger, more, brighter, louder, faster. My life is a sleeping machine plugged in and waiting to go, switch firmly flicked to OFF. Clarence flutters closer, his light warming my face like a spotlight. It feels wonderful.
“This is not your destiny, Candy Caine. There is too much music in you.”
“Music?”
“Yes, music.” Clarence flies over to the guitar around my neck. It shimmers under the light he casts – the remaining paint on its body coming alive: an intense scarlet glow. In a weird way it sort of feels alive too, but not quite. Asleep maybe. He indicates that I should play something. This time, my hands find their place instinctively, my right across the bridge, my left lightly holding the neck. There’s a rightness to the feeling, like putting your arm around someone you love.
“My dear girl. If I told you I was the possessor of an invisible power which could change your day, your mind, your life, the world—”
“I’d believe you. You’re a flipping f—You’re…made of magic, apparently.”
“Not just I. Music, Candy. Music is magic. It is in me as it is in you. You possess this power. You have summoned me with it. The chord of B Major to be precise. And your music, your magic, is going to get us out of here and into your wildest dreams. You do have dreams you wish to come true, don’t you?”
An image leaps into my head, a scene from the dream I always have: me and Hol up onstage in front of a crowd we can’t even see the end of.
“Yes,” I say. “My band. I want to make music.” Then I think of Mum and Ray and the missing puzzle-piece that is BioDad. “And there’s…there’s someone I want to find.”
Clarence B Major leans in close, smiling. “Your father.”
I actually gasp. Then nod. Although why the fact that the magical fairy made of moonbeams that is flying round my bedroom knows I haven’t got a dad is such a shocker, I’m not sure.
“Don’t look so surprised, Candypop! I’ve never really been one for homework but I did do some research before I got here…I sense that he is intrinsic to your destiny. Whoever he is, he gave you your music. This guitar will help you find him and it will help you fulfil your wildest imaginings.”
I look down at the car-crash of metal and wood in my lap. Accidentally, a little snort of derision jumps from between my lips. Clarence is not amused. His expression clouds with anger. He brings his shining hands together and starts to rub his palms.
A luminous not-quite-liquid begins to bubble between them. A shimmering mess of every-colour light, it’s accompanied by the gelatinous hum a fat drunk bee might make. Clarence opens his palms into a circle and blows. The goop separates into six bubbles, which hover in the air for a split second before shooting towards me.
POP OP POP OP POPPOPPOPPOP!
Smashing into the guitar the bubbles explode, releasing a crackling cloud of sparks, smoking colour and noise against the bridge. It’s somewhere between a mini fireworks display and an electrical storm in a snowglobe. The instrument seems to respond, shuddering in my grasp.
Alive with the cloud’s strange energy, the guitar’s three old strings start to glow, pulling tighter and tighter against the neck which pushes out in the opposite direction until…
DONK! DAANG! DUNNNN!
The old strings snap tunelessly and flashing out of the cloud like lightening six perfectly luminous threads appear across the length of the neck. With a triumphant flourish, Clarence strums his little hand across them. They resonate with the most beautiful ear-trembling sound I have ever heard.
“This guitar is your Excalibur, Candypop. It will lead you to your destiny.”
“You wouldn’t think that noise could have come out of such a…beast of a thing,” I say, somewhat in awe.
“Not a beast,” Clarence corrects, “The Beast. Now – get those pyjamas off and let’s get started.”
It transpires that Clarence B Major is a rock star. Or was. Or should have been, if he wasn’t dead. Which he is. Sort of.
“Very cross-making, you know, dying. Especially if you’re in the middle of something. Now this finger pulls back a fret and there you are…a C chord.”
Four hours after our initial meeting, I’m sitting on the bed, dressed in an outfit he handpicked (I look like Amy Winehouse in her darkest hours) being taught the guitar. Clarence is flitting back and forth checking the position of my hands as we work through chords, all the while filling me in on what it’s like to die and transmogrify into a fairy. Actually, it seems that Clarence can transmogrify into anything he likes – he gives me a demo which involves him turning himself into a kettle, a frog, a ridiculous hat and finally a tiny planet with rings that looks like Saturn. Each change is accompanied by a blinding flash of light which leaves me feeling like a welder who’s forgotten to put his goggles on. I search through the whiteout in front of me and can more or less make out Clarence, who has gone back to his original fairy-shape. “My favourite form,” he says, “is a scaled-down version of the one I inhabited on earth. With a couple of useful additions!” He buzzes his wings, momentarily lifting himself a foot or two into the air.
So my flying friend has thrown himself into the role of mentor and I have found my tongue and then some. I’m still sort of trying to figure out (a) whether this is actually happening and (b) if it is – what the heck is going on. So far, via the medium of relentless badgering, here’s what I’ve figured out:
According to Clarence, since he met his untimely end twenty-three years ago, he has been in a kind of limbo, not-quite-on, not-quite-off earth, waiting for the person to come along whose ‘music’ chimed with his. This person would become his charge and anchor him back to the land of the living. A twin soul who he could watch over, guide and protect. Someone whose successful union with all that is meant for them will override Clarence’s unfinished business and allow him to move on. “But to move on where?” I ask. “To, like, heaven?”
“My dear girl, there is no such place. Or if there is, it is strictly metaphorical. There are only two states. The visible and the invisible. I have, by dint of misfortune and truncation of life, one foot in each realm. When my work here is done I may graduate to the invisible. I spend some