Chapter 60
AUDREY
Walking into the music school, I’m facing a new kind of miserable.
This pain of losing Beau, a man I’ve known so fleetingly, is of course a loss that does not exist in the same universe as losing Fraser.
I’m mourning the sense of possibility. The hope.
And the breakneck few days I’ve just enjoyed, during which my heart roared to life again in a way that I hadn’t known it could.
Beau Davenport blazed across my path like a meteor, shifting me beyond a creative crisis that spanned years.
I’m not going to worry about the film. Surely it will be possible to have that scene written out.
When he skated too close to his ex-girlfriend in writing, she had him upend the entire script.
Talk about a repeat offender! And I’d assumed he was so creative!
Perhaps it had been Lucinda who brought the flair.
It’s the whole Shakespeare and Bassano dynamic all over again.
Nearing the door to Llewellyn Hall, I’m hit with an unexpected sense of empowerment.
Last time I was in this room with Josh, he was onstage.
I was in the wings, barely breathing at the magnificence of his work, gutted by the canyon that more than a decade had carved between what should have been comparable careers.
I’d been burning with professional disappointment.
Now I’m bursting with ideas. I was never the kind of composer they tried to pigeonhole me to be.
I don’t want to be predictable. I want to take what I’ve been through and transform it into sounds that people can touch and taste.
Something that transcends the fire of my own experience and flames into theirs.
Music that might be technically clever and complex, but accessible.
I want people to cry with relief because it means so much when they recognise their world in my pieces …
‘Sully! I’ve been trying to reach you for days,’ Josh says in a whisper, sweeping up behind me, taking my arm, and pulling me away from my epiphany at the entrance to the hall, down the side corridor, and into a dark practice room, slamming the door behind us.
There is a beat of silence in the dark, charged with urgency and regret and the familiarity of his scent, that throws me straight back to that hot summer in the studio, and I have to restrain myself from filling the quiet with tumbling thoughts on my recently inspired where to next compositionally. He is no longer my sounding board.
He switches on the light, looks at me as our eyes adjust, and says, ‘What the fuck happened to you?’
‘What?’
‘You look like hell. Mixed with hope. But listen, we haven’t got time to unpack that.’
It’s like being run over by a truck.
‘Ridges is here,’ he announces.
I forget everything else and go stone cold. ‘What do you mean he’s here?’
‘He’s the patron of Parker’s music school. He’s flown in. He’s going to be at tonight’s concert.’
I don’t know what to say. I want to say so much. ‘But, Josh, the kids are all performing original compositions.’
Now that I’m paying attention, he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Face drawn, dark circles—it’s a far cry from that Manhattan chic he was flaunting when he first arrived.
‘Sully, I’ve been in meetings all week with my lawyers.
’ Explains the cuff links. ‘I want to do the right thing here. But there’s a paper trail.
It would come out that I was complicit in what he did to you, and that I’ve continued to ignore it for eighteen years, putting others at risk.
They’ve strongly advised me not to get involved.
I’ve got too much to lose, reputationally. ’
I was wrong when I thought he couldn’t disappoint me any more. ‘What are you saying, Josh? You’re going to protect yourself and offer up your niece?’
He looks at me, spent.
‘Wow,’ I say, shaking my head. Is there a stage beyond ‘disappointed’? I feel like I’ve reached the end of human emotion. As if he’s now put me through the full suite and wrung me out.
‘I feel terrible, Sully. I love you both.’
I stare at him as if he cannot possibly be serious. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word. When it comes to the crunch and you have the opportunity to do the right thing, you choose yourself. Every bloody time! It was bad enough you did this to me. It’s unforgivable to do it to her.’
‘Please try to understand. I’m the artistic director of the—’
‘I know. We all know. But more importantly, you’re her uncle. You were my friend.’
If I thought he seemed torn before, it’s nothing on how he looks now. As if I’ve thrown a grenade and it has scorched a hole right through his core.
‘You could still do this,’ he suggests, quietly. And my blood boils. He thinks I could do it because I’ve got nothing whatsoever to lose.
‘Let’s see,’ I say. ‘I could stand up in that concert hall—a nobody. The former almost stepmum of one of the students. An alcoholic, no less! And I could make a scene. But I’d likely be escorted out.’
‘You are so much more than that—’ He has properly wilted now, leaning against one of the room’s acoustic panels, hardware on his leather jacket threatening to scratch the wood, and I wrench him away from it by the sleeve.
‘On the other hand, Joshua Miller, artistic and music director of the New York fucking Philharmonic, could stand up and say exactly the same thing and it would raise all hell.’ Given his profile, it would make headlines around the world, but I’m not going to mention that.
He rubs his temples, as if my words have shot straight through them. He knows I’m right.
‘Obviously, it would have made more sense for you to tackle this legally and civilly during the week—or any time in the last almost two decades—but unless you can hunt down Ridges right now and deal with it discreetly, we have less than ten minutes before your brilliant and innocent niece walks onto that stage, unaware that he is probably recording the performance, ready to rip off as many of their gifted creations as he can possibly get away with.’
‘I know, but—’
I open the door. ‘You have this one, vastly belated, spectacular opportunity to do the right thing, Josh! Don’t let us all down again.’ And I sweep out of the room.