She looks down at the plate in his hand.

‘Oh. Yes. I made you a chicken salad. With pomegranate. Just because pomegranates are in everything these days.’

She smiles, touched.

‘You should eat before we go to the studio, this’ll be better than that plastic crap.’ He looks down at the dish again. ‘Or then again, maybe not.’ He feels like he’s waffling. He’s a grown man, who wants desperately to go to bed with this woman, he needs to act like it. Though he can’t go to bed with her, that’s the problem. He will ruin her. He’s already done a good job of it so far. He straightens up, takes a step backward as he realises he’s practically leering at her. ‘We need to leave in a few hours. You slept all morning.’

‘I couldn’t sleep last night.’ She looks terrified at the thought of the show tonight.

‘Me neither.’ Their eyes lock. He’d swear she has a hypnotic effect on him. He snaps out of it. ‘The show starts at eight. You’re on first. You don’t need to be there until six. Later than usual, but they said you don’t need to hang around. They’ll do the sound checks without you.’

‘What about a rehearsal?’ she asks, confused.

‘They said you don’t need one. You’ll be absolutely fine, Laura. It’s the last show. The last two minutes you’ll ever be up there. Make it count.’

‘You were making me feel better until you said that.’

‘What I mean is, you need to show them who you really are. In fact, don’t show them, just be you. And they’ll see.’ When she smiles at him, he laughs. ‘I’m shit at this, aren’t I? Last time I had a warm-up gig for an act, twenty people left before the main act arrived.’

She giggles. ‘Maybe you could do that for me tonight, make it easier.’

She takes the plate from his hand and walks to the kitchen table. She sits down. He watches her eat. She crosses one leg over the other. She’s barefoot. His heart thumps. He should leave, but he can’t leave her alone in the apartment, not when she’s been entrusted to him to bring her to the studio in one piece. She might start climbing balconies again.

He smiles at the thought of what happened last night.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ He sits at the table opposite her. Whenever he thinks he should get away from her, he does the exact opposite. But then, the way she looks at him is distracting. ‘I was just thinking of you being the super ninja last night.’

She bites her lip. ‘I’m glad her husband didn’t come.’

‘Hey, if he calls around here today, I’ll be straight out that window. You’re on your own.’ He leans down on the table, head on his crossed arms and looks up at her.

‘Hey,’ she grins, kicking him lightly under the table.

Silence. He watches her eat. He watches her think, studies the furrowing of her brow. Her seriousness makes him smile, every fucking thing she does makes him smile, and when she looks at him his face twitches from hiding the telling smiles. He feels like he’s an overexcited twelve-year-old.

‘I was in rehearsal for two days for the last performance. A big elaborate dance routine. This week, nothing. I’m not sure how to take that.’ She looks at him. ‘Did you see it?’

He can’t stop smiling, and now she thinks he’s laughing at her.

‘Of course I saw it,’ he says. ‘It was terrible.’

She groans, throws her head back, her long neck stretching.

‘It wasn’t your fault. Bo suggested a link to the forest to their artistic director, but Goldilocks and the Three Bears wasn’t quite what she was thinking. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘I told Jack I didn’t want to do it, but they asked if I had any other suggestions and I couldn’t think of anything.’

‘So it was their way or nothing.’

She nods. ‘Was it shocking?’

He thinks of how he felt when he saw her. It had felt like such a long time since he’d seen her: she’d moved to the hotel, been to Australia, he felt completely cut off from her. ‘I was just happy to see you, it had been a while.’

She smiles, her eyes shining.

‘But I know you can be so much better. Bo’s working on something for you for tonight. She’s putting a lot of work into it. I think she wants to redeem herself, show you that she cares.’ He wants to do the same, but he’s not sure how to.

‘She doesn’t owe me anything.’ She frowns. ‘All those mistakes are mine. I own them.’

‘Well then, on the theme of owning mistakes… About what happened with Rory…’

Laura cringes, can barely think about it.

Solomon sits up. ‘I let you down. In a big way. I’ll never forgive myself for that, but I want you to know that I’m sorry. I should have protected you better. I just didn’t want to… I thought I should give you space. For whatever reasons, my own reasons, I didn’t want to crowd you and this new path you’re on.’ He looks at her, wondering if he should continue.

‘I saw you three years ago,’ she interrupts him suddenly, as if she didn’t hear a word of what he’d said, though he knows she did, she was listening intently. ‘On the mountain. I was foraging. I was looking for an elder bush. Tom had cleared them all away, because he was trying to keep the hedge stock-proof, which bothered me because the berries are tasty in autumn and the flower… it doesn’t matter.’

‘Go on,’ he urges her.

‘The flower has the real power. It adds an incredible flavour to wines, drinks and jams. Gaga used to make the most delicious elderflower cordial, at its best after only six months. I was on a mission. I wanted to find an elder bush that Joe and Tom hadn’t destroyed, so I moved away further than I usually would. I came out from the woods and you were standing there, with your eyes closed, the headphones around your neck, that bag over your shoulder. I didn’t know what you were doing at the time. Now I know that you were listening, for sounds, but all I knew then was that you looked so peaceful.’

‘I didn’t see you.’

She shakes her head. ‘I didn’t want you to see me.’

‘This was three years ago?’

‘May.’ The fourth of May, she remembers. And not just because the elderflower was in bloom. ‘I asked Tom who you were. He said you were making a TV show. That you liked sounds too. That’s all he said.’ She swallows hard before making a confession. ‘I watched you a few times.’

‘Really?’ he smiles. His heart pounds. ‘You should have said hi.’

‘I wish I had,’ she says softly. ‘Every day that I didn’t find you again, I wished that you’d seen me the previous time but then, when it came to it, I couldn’t. So this time when I saw you in the forest, after not having seen you for so long, I couldn’t risk it happening again. That’s why I made a sound. I wanted your attention.’

She looks at him from under long eyelashes. There, the truth was out.

‘Well, you certainly got my attention,’ he says, reaching across the table and sliding the plate away. He takes her hands in his.

She wants him to kiss her.

He wants to kiss her so badly. He moves around the table, places a hand on her cheek and pulls her close. He kisses her gently at first, drawing away to look in her eyes, to make sure it’s okay. Her pupils are dilated, the green rim around them almost luminous. She closes her eyes, then kisses him hungrily.

She sensed him before she smelled him, she smelled him before she saw him. She saw him before he saw her. She knew him before he knew her. He loved her before he kissed her.

41

The tension, adrenaline and excitement that emanates from the Slaughter House is visceral as Laura and Solomon draw closer in the SUV. There are hundreds of fans gathering outside behind barricades, waving posters, cameras in hand, singing songs of their favourite bands that have nothing to do with the talent show but everything to do with uniting these people in mutual fandom. They cheer as the SUV approaches, the sound of so many voices making Laura’s stomach flip. Solomon feels it too, and he’s not even going anywhere near the stage. He wouldn’t blame her if she took flight now. She doesn’t owe anybody this much.