The older two kids shook their heads wordlessly as they continued with their crafting, while the younger two stared at her. They assessed her for a full ten seconds before the youngest kid adjudicated: ‘Nah, you can stay.’

‘See? There you go. Come, sit. Grab a knife.’

Suki didn’t sit. ‘Really, it’s fine. I’m actually… I just came for a quick look. I hadn’t seen the studio since… I’ll see you soon, all right.’ She backed out of the room and headed through the waiting room to the stairs.

Vincent had followed her and hurried to catch her up. ‘Hold on. Wait a sec,’ he called to her.

She stopped by the window, eyeing the route down the stairs.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘Yes, of course… No. No, I’m not really, actually.’ She turned to look out of the vast window over the planes.

Vincent looked at her.

‘It’s exquisite here, Vinnie,’ Suki said. ‘I don’t know why it’s taken me so long.’

‘It hasn’t been that long. We only opened in August.’

‘I could live here. Honestly.’

‘Well, you know they’re doing the apartments next. The offer stands… until they’re sold, that is.’

She sighed the platitude away, her anger getting the better of her for a moment. ‘She just disappeared, didn’t she? We chewed her up and spat her out. She tried so hard… to carve a space, to belong. But she disappeared, and it’s like she never existed.’

‘That’s not true,’ Vincent said. ‘She’s here. I think of her a lot. Although…’

Although I owed her nothing. He didn’t say it, but the meaning still resonated and batted against the glass pane.

‘I’m glad it worked out for you and your grandmother,’ Suki said. ‘You deserve that.’

‘Deserve means nothing. People don’t get what they deserve,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

‘You’d better get back to your troubled, needy children.’

Feeling the acid in her comment, Vincent opened his mouth, decided against it, and walked away.

Suki made her way downstairs, where James and Vincent’s grandmother were busy in the control booth.

‘’Scuse me.’ A woman with a mug of coffee angled past her into the studio, and sat down in front of a microphone.

The secondary stage near the control-booth window where Curtis had stood and died in that ghastly accident was now occupied by a collection of audio equipment, all angles and jags and LEDs. Suki gazed at it, remembering the smoke and the panic, before flushing it away with a pre-prepared ideation: stupidly, a swan on the mist-shrouded Avon. Wilfully editing out the trash choking the riverside reeds, the shit that bobbed in Shakespeare’s river.

She turned and headed towards the red door.

‘Ready?’ Gloria’s voice sounded behind her back. ‘Track seven, secondary vocals. From the bridge. Let’s start with “Falling”.’

Acknowledgements and Inspirations

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND INSPIRATIONS