Chapter 24 #2
Her dad’s band had been rehearsing all week, and Chloe dropped into the church hall after work to hear them.
She was surprised by how good they sounded.
Her dad sat at the upright piano, glasses perched halfway down his nose, fingers moving with careful precision, leading the others in with a “One, and a two, and a one two three…” Neville, the church warden, was on guitar.
He was in his sixties and had a halo of blond hair that stuck out in tufts around his head.
He wore mustard-yellow corduroy trousers with a faded Metallica T-shirt and played with his eyes closed, his hand strumming dramatically, as though he were Jimmy Page on the mainstage at Glastonbury with Led Zeppelin.
“Let’s bring it down a notch, Neville,” her father suggested, “a little less fortissimo perhaps?”
“Sure thing,” Neville said, patting his guitar, as though it were the guitar itself who’d got a little overexcited.
Hamish was on drums. He was a friend of her father’s from bridge club. He had long gray hair, tied back in a ponytail, and wore thick varifocal glasses. His cheeks were flushed, his sleeves rolled, and he was sweating through his linen shirt despite the cold. He grinned at Chloe.
“What do you reckon, Chloe?” he asked. “Does it sound like you remember?”
“It’s sounding great,” Chloe said, giving them all a thumbs-up. “So what are you calling yourself these days?”
“The Bay City Bowlers,” Neville told her proudly, “because we’re on a bowling team too.”
“No, no, I thought we decided on the Granny Smiths?” Hamish said with a frown. “I got T-shirts made.”
“But we’re not grannies,” Chloe’s father pointed out.
“That’s why it’s funny,” Hamish insisted. “We’re hardly the Smiths either, are we?”
“What do you think, Chloe?” Neville asked, putting her on the spot.
“I like it,” she said, and that seemed to settle it.
The morning of the recording, Chloe rang the studio to check John would definitely be working that day. He was.
Since she didn’t play an instrument, Chloe planned on playing the triangle.
For her scheme to come off, she would also need a disguise.
Rummaging through the church costume box, she found an old fake beard from a production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
She tucked her hair into a beanie, threw on a loose plaid shirt and a pair of her dad’s jeans.
It wasn’t the most flattering outfit to make a grand romantic gesture in, but she needed to go incognito.
Neville borrowed a van from work to drive the whole motley crew up to Abbey Road.
No one knew exactly what the plan was, not even Chloe, but something told her she would know once they got there.
Walking into the reception, Chloe froze.
Richard was there, curled up in a dog bed behind the front desk.
She ducked behind her dad, letting him do the talking, but Richard leaped up, tail wagging, and bounded over to her.
“Sorry,” the receptionist said, trying to call him back. “I know some people don’t like dogs.”
“Don’t worry, I love them, especially this one,” Chloe said.
The receptionist gave her a strange look, then Chloe remembered she was wearing a beard and wasn’t supposed to be talking.
Crouching down, she gave Richard a stealthy hug, then whispered into his fur, “Shh, it’s a surprise,” before ushering him back to his bed.
A young man with a nose piercing came to collect them and showed them through to the session room. As they filed in to set up, Chloe’s eyes darted toward the glass of the control room. There he was, headphones around his neck, auburn hair in a ruffled mess—John.
She took a breath. Showtime.
He pressed a button on the console so they could hear him through the glass. “Hi, welcome, I’m John. Ready to do a sound check, when you are.”
He looked impossibly good, wearing a white linen shirt, two-day-old stubble, and wood-grain-framed glasses she hadn’t seen him in before.
Chloe ached to knock on the glass, to let him know she was there.
But that wasn’t the plan. And after all his thoughtful, meticulously planned romantic gestures, it felt only right she be the one to plan a grand gesture now.
She wasn’t even sure if John would be able to see past what had happened at the reunion, past Rob.
He hadn’t been in touch. But if there was even the tiniest chance, she had to do something bold, to cut through the mess, to say more than words could.
She needed to show him that he mattered, that she saw him, heard him.
“Do you have a digital file of your music? A printout even?” John asked.
Chloe nudged her father.
“Er, no, it’s all in our heads,” her dad said slightly too confidently.
John frowned. “You’ve only got the studio for an hour. It will be easier for me to help if I have the music in front of me.”
“We’re pros, don’t worry,” said Chloe’s dad, striking a slightly duff chord on the piano. “We’ll only need one take.”
John shook his head but smiled. “Okay, it’s your hour.”
Once everyone was set, Hamish counted them in, and they started to play.
Chloe hid at the back. John hadn’t written a part for the triangle and she didn’t want to ruin the piece with a misplaced ting, so she mimed along, watching John’s face through the glass, waiting for him to recognize the music.
This is how the plan had unfolded in Chloe’s head: They would play the music; John would recognize his work, composed all those years ago.
His eyes would well up, then he’d bang on the glass, like Dustin Hoffman at the end of The Graduate.
“Chloe?” he’d shout, looking for her, knowing she had to be there.
She would rip off the beanie and her fake beard, let her curls—somehow not flattened by the hat—fall in slow motion around her shoulders.
John would leap over the control deck, fling open the door to the recording room, pull her into his arms, and say, “My song.”
“Your song,” she’d say, with a coquettish smile.
“You kept the music, all this time?”
“I kept everything,” she’d whisper. Everyone else in the room would fade into darkness, so it was just the two of them beneath a perfect spotlight.
She’d say, “I don’t expect anything from you, but—” He’d stop her with a kiss, and everyone would cheer.
Okay, so it didn’t have to play out exactly like that, but this was the rough plan, the fantasy.
The reality was less dramatic.
When they started to play, Chloe thought they sounded great.
The red light was on, the session was being recorded, but John didn’t react.
He put his headphones on, listened, adjusted levels.
She could see him monitoring the deck, but there was no flicker of recognition, no sudden gasp, certainly no dramatic glass-banging.
Were they playing it wrong? Was he distracted?
Or did he simply not remember the music?
Chloe’s stomach clenched. Her bandmates started giving each other sideways glances; she could feel the moment slipping through her fingers. Then John leaned into the mic. Okay, here we go.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “It’s sounding good. But I’m not picking up any triangle.”
A pause. Chloe’s dad looked at her.
“Yeah, you, the lad on the triangle, I’m not picking you up on either mic,” John said, tapping his headset. “Do you want to stand closer to the guitar?”
Chloe followed his instructions, cheeks burning beneath the scratchy beard. What else could she do? If she revealed herself now, before he’d even recognized the song, it wouldn’t have the same impact. If your grand gesture needed footnotes, you weren’t doing it right.
“What’s happening?” Hamish hissed. “He doesn’t know it?”
“Shall we go from the top?” her dad offered with a helpless shrug.
“Hold on,” John said, standing up, then walked through the door into the small studio. “I’m just going to reangle this mic. Balance out the piano with the strings.”
Chloe froze. He was right beside her, fiddling with the mic stand, blissfully unaware he was completely ruining this romantic ambush.
“What do you think of the music?” her dad said, swiveling his piano seat toward John. Oh no, he was going rogue.
“I like it. Is it an original composition?” John asked.
“Yes, for a musical,” her dad said, emphasizing the word as though John might not know what a musical was. John looked around at the others. They were all staring at him a little too intently.
“Okay then,” he said, visibly unnerved. “Let’s lay it down.”
Chloe should have stopped the session, removed her disguise, explained everything like a normal person.
But she opted for the less embarrassing path, which was to do nothing.
She dinged her triangle at random intervals for all four of John’s songs that the band had rehearsed.
Then they thanked the studio, took the USB stick they were presented with, and left.
Back in the van, the atmosphere was muted. Chloe yanked off her disguise.
“I’m sorry I dragged you all here for nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?” said Hamish, eyes wide with delight. “I just got to play my drums in a real recording studio on Abbey Road. I loved every minute of it.” The others nodded in agreement, while still managing to look suitably disappointed for Chloe.
“Didn’t quite go as planned, then,” her father said.
“No,” she said, folding the beanie in her hand.
“Go, talk to him,” her dad said gently. “You don’t need to hide behind all this, love. It was a nice idea, but maybe how you tell him isn’t important. You just need to tell him.”
“What if he says no, what if—” Chloe lifted her eyes to the sky.
“Then he says no. Better to have asked and heard no than never to have asked at all.”
So, Chloe got out of the van, waved the others off, went back to the studio, and knocked on the door.