Chapter 1 The Devil You Know #2
Simon’s expression didn’t change, but his attention sharpened. He leaned forward, fingertips pressed together.
“I don’t understand why you’re being so dismissive,” he said, his patience edging into condescension. “We’re not talking about tomorrow. April gives us months to prepare, to work through whatever issues—”
"Firstly, I said no. And secondly, there is no ‘us’. I don’t recall you being on stage with me while I perform.”
"Catherine, I need you to understand something. Public sympathy has an expiration date. Right now, people remember you with affection, with concern. They want to see you succeed. But that goodwill isn’t going to last forever.
And the longer you stay away, the more the narrative shifts from 'courageous artist taking time to heal' to 'the once great prodigy who couldn't handle what happened. '"
Catherine's jaw tightened; it was the only visible reaction she would allow herself.
“I’ve been patient with you,” Simon said.
“Very patient. As have the institutions, well beyond industry standard.
But they have budgets, programming cycles, and boards to answer to.
They can't hold spaces open indefinitely on the possibility that you might be ready someday. Even if you are Catherine Matthews."
He reached across his desk and tapped a stack of press clippings in the folder, neatly organized in chronological order. "This is every major mention of your name in publications over the past twelve months."
He fanned them, and Catherine could see the stack's progression from substantial to sparse, the gaps between articles widening like a pulse slowing toward flatline.
"August, six mentions. October, three. December one, and that was a year-in-review piece that included you in a list of 'notable absences.' Silence makes people forget, Cat. Or worse, it makes them remember you as what you were rather than what you could still be."
"There are other options," Catherine said. "I could start recording—"
"Recording what? Your last album was four years ago.
The market for classical recordings has contracted thirty percent since then.
Labels aren't taking risks on catalog projects from artists who aren't actively performing. I know you’re currently teaching, but—" He spread his hands in a gesture that managed to convey both respect and dismissal.
"Teaching is what you do when you're ready to step back from performing, not instead of it. And look, I understood it in the immediate aftermath, but it’s been nearly a year, and at some point, you have to get over it. "
Catherine flinched at the bluntness of Simon's statement. As if she hadn't spent every waking hour of the past year trying to do exactly that.
"Is that what you think this is?” She asked. “Something to get over?"
"No. I just meant—"
"I know exactly what you meant. You think this is a psychological hurdle. A confidence issue. Something that can be overcome with the right pep talk and a carefully managed press tour. But it’s not. Maybe I am ready to step back."
"You're not." Simon's tone sharpened, just slightly, the first hint of impatience bleeding through his professional veneer.
Then he caught himself, his expression softening back into concern.
"Come on, Cat. You're not someone who teaches scales to children and calls it a life. That's not who you are."
Catherine's throat felt tight. She wanted to argue that he didn't know who she was anymore, that the person he'd managed for more than a decade had stopped existing on a stage in London, but the words wouldn't form into anything that didn't sound like weakness, and whatever else she had lost in the past year, she had not yet lost the ability to keep that from showing.
“I need to be frank with you,” he said. “Three separate conductors have approached me in the past month, asking if you're ever coming back or if they should stop including you in their dream programming.
You're being replaced, Cat. Not maliciously. Not because anyone wants to erase you. But because the world moves forward and there are dozens of extraordinary young pianists who are hungry, available, and uncomplicated. And every month you stay away, one of them gets the booking that should have been yours. Come on, you’re not an amateur. You know how this goes."
She did know. Better than most.
“I know what you’re thinking. You're thinking about what happens if—." He paused, not finishing the sentence. "But we'll build in safeguards. Shorter programs, at least initially. I'm not suggesting you walk onto the stage at Carnegie Hall tomorrow and play the Hammerklavier."
Catherine's hands had gone white on her handbag. She loosened them deliberately, feeling the blood return in a pins-and-needles rush. "I think we're done here," she said as she gathered her coat.
"The anniversary is a window. It's a natural hook for press coverage, for renewed interest. If we don't use it, the window closes.
And the next opportunity will be the five-year mark, and that's not the same story.
That's not a triumphant return. That’s a sad grab at trying to rekindle what you had. "
Catherine stared at the folder still lying on Simon's desk, its contents a blueprint for a version of her life that she wasn't sure still existed.
That version of her hadn’t needed to think about any of this.
She thought about the pills she took every evening, the alarm on her phone set for the same time regardless of time zone or circumstance.
Her medication would help, her neurologist had assured her.
They made the risk manageable. But manageable wasn't gone, and the gap between those two states felt infinite when she thought about stage lights and audiences and the attention that came with performing Rachmaninoff in a hall that held thousands of people.
Catherine forced herself to exhale slowly. "I'll review your proposal. But I’m not making any promises," she said. The words were a door she was opening just enough to escape through.
Simon's expression shifted, a crack of genuine satisfaction breaking through his professionalism. "I know better than to ask you to promise me anything. I'm just asking you to read the proposal, and then we can pick up this conversation again next week."
He moved to the door and held it open. As she passed him, he added quietly, “Just don’t wait too long to decide. These opportunities don’t stay open for long.”
Catherine walked into the corridor without responding, the folder already in her handbag, and the ultimatum following close behind.
She didn’t slow until the doors released her onto the street, where the city hit her all at once.
Taxi horns, construction drills, the percussion of hundreds of footsteps on pavement.
Catherine stood motionless on the sidewalk outside the Ardent Row building while pedestrians flowed around her, like water moving past a stone.
With a deep breath, she joined the current of foot traffic moving west toward Fifth Avenue. Her boots made curt clicks on the concrete, thankful for a rhythm she could count and measure herself against.
At the corner of Fifth and 52nd, she paused at a newsstand, ostensibly to let a cluster of tourists pass, but really it was because her eye had caught the display of magazines.
Three different music publications were fanned across the upper back rack.
The covers featured faces she didn't recognize, a young cellist, perhaps twenty, his expression earnest and hungry; a pianist with dark hair and an avant-garde dress that suggested someone cultivating a brand; another pianist, this one male, photographed at the baby grand with dramatic side lighting that made his hands look luminous.
Her name wasn't visible on any of the covers when, at one time, she would have graced all three simultaneously.
She stood there for a moment longer than necessary before continuing down Fifth Avenue.
The faces on those magazines looked eager for the spotlight in a way she remembered being once, before she'd learned what that hunger cost. They probably practiced four hours a day (she used to practice six, but that’s beside the point), they probably slept soundly without medication to manage the what-ifs that gathered in the dark hours.
She walked another block before raising her hand at the curb. A cab pulled in, and she slid into the back seat with relief. "The Lenox on York Avenue, please."
He nodded and eased into traffic. As the cab inched forward, the pressure came with her. The ticking clock, Simon's voice outlining the narrowing window of opportunity, the faces on magazine covers that weren't hers anymore. There was nowhere for it to go and no easy resolution. It simply stayed.