A light wave of laughter rippled around the room.

“But the thing I’ve been constantly impressed by is the commitment you’ve all shown to making this thing work. When you step out onto that stage tonight, I want you to feel proud of what you’ve achieved. Because I’m proud of you. I know you’re going to do a fantastic job out there. And this song we’re singing—just think about the power of that title: ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.’ I want you to feel every single word of it, just like Nina Simone did back in the day—feel it, sing it, communicate it, and let’s help raise a ton of money for charity.”

An almost imperceptible crack in Ben’s voice caused him to pause, swallow, breathe. He caught Audrey’s eye and she smiled at him.

“Now, I know it’s late notice and I don’t want anyone to freak out but I want to make a tiny change to our song tonight.”

Panic bristled around the choir. Ben raised both his hands, palms flat toward the group, as if preemptively seeking forgiveness. “Just hear me out, OK? It’s not a huge change. I want to start the song as a solo—just the first verse, nothing more—and then we’ll pick it up as a group exactly as we’ve done throughout rehearsals. And I’d like you, Audrey, to take that solo.”

Audrey felt ninety-two pairs of eyes pivot toward her, felt their collective gaze burn into her cheeks.

Ben grinned at her, eyebrows raised. “What do you say? Will you do that? Just the first four lines, that’s all. I think it’ll be so much more powerful as a solo. And you can do it, I know you can.”

“Oh, go on, Gran, you must. It’ll be awesome. You have to say yes.”

Audrey was aware of Phoebe’s arm around her shoulders, of nearly a hundred faces gazing at her expectantly, of Ben waiting for a response.

She felt words begin to morph into recognizable shapes in her head. Words that felt familiar, safe, reliable. Words that began to make their way toward her mouth as if knowing through decades of experience that they were the right ones.

No, I can’t. Don’t be silly. Of course I can’t.

Audrey readied herself to reply. And then a snapshot of memory flashed into her head.

She is lying on her bed, feet crossed at the ankles, the voices of contestants on Call My Bluff filtering through the partition wall from the sitting room next door. Her diary is propped up on her pillow, a pen in her hand. She writes. As she pours her hopes and dreams into her diary on the evening of her sixteenth birthday, she experiences an unbridled sense of optimism: that the whole world is out there waiting for her, just as long as she is brave enough to go out and grab it.

Audrey looked around the room at the faces of her fellow choir members, strangers three months ago and yet now part of a group to which she felt deeply attached. She raised her head to look at Ben. And then, without affording herself an opportunity to change her mind, she heard herself reply, loudly and clearly, “OK. If you really think I can, I’ll do it.”