Atlantic Shift Read online

  Atlantic Shift

  EMILY BARR

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2004 Emily Barr

  The right of Emily Barr to be identified as the Author of

  the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licencing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 8164 7

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  chapter one - November 14th

  chapter two - A week later

  chapter three - Early December

  chapter four - December 18th

  chapter five - December 20th

  chapter six - Boxing Day

  chapter seven - Late January

  chapter eight - February

  chapter nine - The next day

  chapter ten - A week later

  chapter eleven - March

  chapter twelve - Five days later

  chapter thirteen - Two weeks later

  chapter fourteen - The next day

  chapter fifteen - Late March

  chapter sixteen - April

  chapter seventeen - The following afternoon

  chapter eighteen - A week later

  chapter nineteen - Late April

  chapter twenty - Two days later

  chapter twenty-one - The following afternoon

  chapter twenty-two - Friday

  chapter twenty-three - Tuesday

  chapter twenty-four - Wednesday

  chapter twenty-five - Sunday

  epilogue

  Praise for Emily Barr’s writing:

  ‘A warmly engaging novel of genuine quality’

  Publishing News

  ‘Emily Barr has pulled off this compelling story of what happens when things become too Single White Female so effectively, we’re thinking maybe her best friend should start to watch her back’

  Heat

  ‘Barr is a fresh new talent in literature and this novel certainly packs a punch’ Glasgow Evening Times

  ‘Honest, sharply observed, funny and sad’

  List

  ‘Her light touch allows her to make some obviously heart-felt points, and she manages to keep the momentum going with some very funny twists and turns of the plot’

  Oxford Times

  ‘A highly evocative read. It has all the ingredients of pure escapism . . . and a pace that never slackens’

  Eastern Daily Press

  ‘Superb characterisation and edgy style’

  Glasgow Daily Record

  For my boys: James, Gabe and Sebastien

  Thanks are due to the following people: Nadine Thompson, Sarah Howard and Providence Music in Bristol for helping out with details. Jonny Geller for being the best agent in town. Jane Morpeth and everyone else at Headline for making it such a pleasure. Tammy Gallacher: thanks for looking after Gabe while I wrote - he will miss you terribly. Thank you to all my friends for understanding that writing a book while pregnant, and in charge of a toddler, edged everything else out of my life for a while and meant that no one heard from me for months on end. Finally, thanks to James and Gabe for providing such gorgeous distractions, and for putting up with me, sick, tired, and busy for the past nine months. This is for you, with all my love.

  chapter one

  November 14th

  I am halfway through a solo cello performance on stage at the London Palladium when I decide to leave my husband. I have been considering the idea for the past two years, half hoping that he would take action before I did. Now I realise that if I want to be free from Jack I must fashion my own freedom; and there will never be a perfect time to tell him. Tonight is an imperfect time for many reasons: it will do.

  I have played this suite a hundred thousand times, so I let my mind wander, confident that the notes will keep coming. I want to turn my head, to evaluate the way Jack is watching me from the wings, but this would be unprofessional. Two thousand pairs of eyes are focused on me alone. It would have been less scary if I’d asked to play something that needs at least a piano accompaniment, but no one wants to hear me playing Brahms. They demand the prelude to the Bach Solo Suite No. 1 in G major. The reason they want to hear that, and that alone, is because I played it on a mobile phone advertisement.

  I have desecrated Bach’s memory by playing his music on an advertisement, which in turn led to a surprising number of people downloading the opening bars as a ring tone. I might not do the music justice, but mobile phones slaughter it.

  I tilt my chin, instead, towards the Royal Box, wondering whether His Highness is enjoying my performance, or whether he’s picking his nose. Although famously cultured, I can’t imagine that this could really be his favourite way of spending his birthday. Then I force myself to refocus my attention on the music. I am coasting. I am always coasting, and so far I have got away with it. In a concert like this, in a hall which has been sold out for months, I know that I can give an acceptable performance on adrenalin alone. The hot lights keep me going, along with the prospect of dismal failure. I force myself not to go completely on to automatic pilot: that would be too dangerous. One day I will make a complacent misjudgement and the result will be a disaster. I must play with some degree of musicality. The trouble is, I can clone my performance of this Bach suite from the advert, and I can do it without really thinking. I, like everyone else in this hall, have heard it countless times, and I can play with exactly the same nuances as I did then. That’s what these people want. That’s why the organisers were so keen to make me play the Solo Suite No. 1, rather than anything else I might have wanted to offer them. I didn’t even try to change the programme. I like an easy life.

  These suites are deceptively simple. It’s very hard to play them properly, I tell myself, as I dip from A string to D string. It is all in the phrasing, and I copy my phrasing from a recording by Rostropovich. It seemed the safest way to do it. I do not try to convince myself that I play this anything other than adequately. But I give my adequate performance with an enormous confidence, and since I play it like I do on the telly, everyone is happy.

  I am confident because I know I look like a professional cellist. I am a professional cellist. I make my living this way. Every day, I expect to be found out. Real musicians don’t take me seriously; neither do music critics. Everyone else thinks I’m fabulous. Jack knows I’m not. He has always let me know that, although he is far from a musician himself, he sees through me. He knows I’m not brilliant, and he uses this fact to keep me in my place. He would call it encouragement - ‘If you do this well, Evie, when you’re not really trying, think how fantastic you would be if you put your heart into it’ - but I know that he’s playing with my mind. He would love me to fail, in the way he failed as an artist. He wears me down, and I don’t need him any more.
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  This stage is vast, and I am lit, mercilessly, by the spotlight, so I can’t make out anything in the audience beyond the glint of glasses, and the exit signs, far back in the darkness. The sound of my bow across the strings fills every corner of the concert hall. I rarely play for live audiences - my preferred venue is a small recording studio, with a few men in black moving dials and knobs behind a sheet of thick glass. I was almost sick with nerves before I came on to play my mercifully short part in this enormous classical-lite charity concert. I prefer to play wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with my hair scraped back and no make-up on. This evening I am dolled up so my own mother must barely recognise me from her seat in the stalls. I’m wearing a dusty-pink long dress by Maria Grachvogel, designed for me personally, because the cello does not lend itself to the wearing of clingy scraps of skirt, and because I am, in my own way, famous enough to have my own dress. My hair is shining blonde, freshly bobbed, with a diamond clip in it, and absurdly over-styled. My make-up is frighteningly garish, but the make-up woman assured me that it wouldn’t look that way to the audience.

  Jack laughed when he saw me. He said I looked like Barbie’s mother. This was not what I needed to hear.

  With relief, I note that I am on the homeward stretch. It doesn’t take long to get to the homeward stretch of a piece that is less than three minutes long. I know I’m nearly there when the high notes start coming in. I am tempted to rush the last few bars, to get this over with, to move on to the thing I have to do, to make myself free. I know the audience is loving my performance, and that they’re loving it for the wrong reasons. I am now reprising the very passage from the advert, and the two thousand two hundred and eighty-six people who have paid £150 a ticket to see me, among many others, are humming along collectively. I can hear a breathy rush coming towards me from them, a random mass hum-along. It has the same out-of-time, tuneless quality as hymn-singing in church.

  I hold myself back, and pace my performance, not wanting to make it obvious how desperate I am to be off the stage and attending to my personal life. I will tell him. Things have been going wrong for far too long. I am certain that I’m strong enough to get by without him, at last.

  When I come to the end of the piece, relief swamps me, and I allow myself to smile a wholehearted smile. I love this moment. It makes everything worthwhile. Every person in the auditorium is applauding me. Even, I note after a quick glance, my husband. All eyes are on me. I have played my part, played my cello, and these people have paid very good money to hear me, and now they are clapping. I love them, because they love me.

  I stand up and bow, and the applause grows slightly stronger. My smile goes up a notch, and I look out into the audience, genuinely grateful to every single one of them. A light shines on Prince Charles, and I see him clapping for me.

  At moments like this, I always have the same thought: I hope Louise is watching me now. The thought lasts a fraction of a second. I bow twice more to the audience and once to the Royal Box, not caring, for once, about the obsequiousness. Although the television cameras are here, I ignore them like a professional. I stiffen my resolve not to play an encore, and accept a bouquet of pastel roses from a little girl who stumbles on to the stage wearing a shiny pink dress. I kiss her, and hear an ‘Ahhhh!’ from my fans. She curtseys to me, as if I were the Queen, and walks backwards off the stage, to her waiting, beaming mother. I smile again, at everyone, and depart from the stage as my applause starts to die away. It is my applause. I wish I could keep it, and bring it out when I need to hear it.

  ‘Well done, Evie,’ says Penny, the stage manager, giving me a pat on the shoulder. ‘Good stuff.’ Then she is off, attending to the next performer, an eleven-year-old male pianist who has been fingered by the press as a rising star. What they mean is that he, like me, is photogenic. Little Billy, as he is known in print, has blond hair that flops across his eyes, an angelic face, and, unless he’s exceptionally lucky, an incipient drug or alcohol problem. He will be delighting the audience with Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor. God help him when he reaches puberty.

  I am the perfect candidate for a concert like this. I am classical-lite through and through. My musicianship would be put to best use in one of the London orchestras, or playing solos on the second rung of the semi-professional ladder. My talent has been promoted far beyond its value because, apparently, everyone loves a blonde girl in lipstick who can do interesting things between her thighs. I always have a CD out at the beginning of December, and it has always sold hundreds of thousands of copies by Christmas Eve. I make most of my income playing for adverts, and I seem to be increasingly filmed, as well as recorded, as my profile has risen. I have played for the President of the United States, and for a reception at Downing Street, and I have been invited to the Kremlin. My agents say I should branch out into pop music - ‘That is where the money is’ - but I have resisted, so far. When I try to picture myself playing the cello on Top of the Pops, all that comes to mind is a vision of Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Unless I put my foot down, however, my next CD will contain several tracks played over a techno beat.

  The press like me, and I like them, too. I’m often pictured in the tabloids, and I enjoy it. If I suspect someone is waiting for me, outside the house or anywhere else that I’m going, I make a particular effort with my hair and make-up, and they appreciate that. I appreciate it, too. Every time my picture is printed, hundreds more CDs vanish from the shelves. My personal life has never been interesting enough for them, so I’ve had to wear outrageous dresses and high heels to sustain attention.

  Now I’m going to leave Jack. They will adore that, when they hear about it. My profile will soar. Briefly, I wonder whether I should call a friendly hack in the morning. There are several in my address book who would leap upon my news.

  My cynicism is disgusting: I haven’t told my husband yet, and I’m already contemplating telling the readers of the Mail. I look around among the dusty stage lights and random clutter, and catch sight of him chatting to a stage hand. I pause for a moment and look at him. He looks cheerful. He hasn’t dressed up for the evening, because he knew he would stay backstage with me. When I met Jack, he looked like what he was: an art student. I loved that look. Now he looks like what he is: a computer technician. I walk towards him purposefully, holding my cello like a shield. I have no doubt at all that I am doing the right thing.

  ‘Evie,’ says Jack, throwing a companionable arm around my shoulders. I look up at his face. He is rosy-cheeked, and he looks pleased. ‘Well done, gorgeous. You were great.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says the stage hand, with a shy smile. ‘You were.’

  I smile at him. ‘Thanks.’

  Jack ignores him. ‘Shall we grab some dinner?’

  I shake him off, irritated, and shift my cello to the other hand, so it is between us.

  The boy produces a biro from behind his ear. ‘Could I possibly have an autograph?’ he asks nervously. ‘I’m your biggest fan, Miss Silverman.’

  ‘No,’ I tell him, and stare pointedly until he shuffles away. I know I’m supposed to be charming to the fans, but that was an intrusion.

  ‘Jack,’ I say to my husband, ‘I have to stay here till the end. You know that. I told you before. They need me back on stage for the finale.’

  Little Billy’s three chords ring out, confident and arresting. I want to stand exactly where I am and listen to him. He is good. Jack takes no notice.

  ‘But you don’t have to play again. No one will notice.’

  ‘I do. They will. We’re all playing “Happy Birthday” to Prince Charles. Cringeworthy, yes, sure, but I have to do it. They will notice if I’m not there - how could they fail to in a dress like this? And don’t tell me I didn’t tell you about it, because I know I did.’

  ‘Then let’s just say, if you told me, it slipped my mind. Bugger it, Evie, I don’t want to spend my whole evening hanging out backstage at some pageant of arselicking sycophants. I have a lot else on, you know, and of course I
wanted to come and support you here, but unfortunately there are other things I need to get on with.’

  ‘Then go home.’

  ‘Sure you won’t come with me?’

  ‘Why don’t you get us a takeaway and we can have it in my dressing room? You know I can’t leave.’

  Jack shrugs. He looks annoyed. ‘Whatever.’

  We have reached my door. I go in, and look around the tiny room. It is meticulously tidy. The only time I cannot bear to have an item out of place is when I am about to perform. I feel like a fraud anyway, and I know that if I wasn’t prepared mentally for a performance - if I let the chaos creep in - then I would no longer get away with it. My serious reviews would go from mediocre to scathing. I only get good reviews from Heat and Smash Hits, and that’s because they hardly ever review anything classical. Never, in fact, but they make an exception for Evie Silverman because they like my hair and they like my clothes. They would love it if I shifted my focus to pop.

  One mag did a feature a couple of weeks ago, based on a photo of me, advising people how to ‘steal her style’. I was wearing jeans and a cardigan. Not a difficult look, I wouldn’t have thought. It included phrases such as ‘Evie swears by John Frieda Sheer Blonde Spun Gold Balm’. Which was news to me, but I might try it out, to see why it is that I love it so much.

  I put the cello away, and leave the door of its case swinging open. Then I turn back to my husband.