are no auditions, no prerequisites for joining and no charge for being a choir member. We’ll all decide the songs we want to sing and try to include something for everyone. The most important thing for me is to create something we can all be a part of and enjoy. All I need from you, if you’re interested, is enthusiasm. Everything else will come along the way.’
Woody coughed loudly, causing all eyes to turn towards him.
Elsie took the hint. ‘I won’t be doing this alone. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Woody Jensen …’
The assembled group murmured their hellos as Woody stood, his Matrix-style leather coat and skull T-shirt beneath giving him what he hoped was a suitably imposing appearance. Silver chains jangled at his wrists as he raised both hands in a red carpet greeting. ‘Greetings. You may remember me from the hit Eighties rock band, Hellfinger?’
Daisy stifled a giggle at the uniformly blank looks that met this question.
‘No bother, you can Google me later. I’m proud to say this choir was my idea and the universe itself sent me this wonderful woman to be a minstrel to my musical wizardry. Together, friends, we can shake the very foundations of this town, infuse the collective psyches of the people with mystical tunes and bring power back to the proletariat through the medium of music …’
‘… Or just have a lot of fun making music,’ Elsie added quickly, noting the relief on several of the group’s faces.
Woody nodded. ‘Well, yeah, that too.’
‘Does that sound good?’
Danny raised his hand. ‘Could we do some up-to-date stuff? I was part of The DreamTeam for six months and the most modern thing we did was “Mr Postman” by The Carpenters.’
Sasha sniggered. ‘Talk about lame. I vote we do Gaga.’
‘Gaga is great, man! We can mash her up with Led Zep or Hendrix …’ Woody’s grey eyes were alive as a million musical possibilities flashed before him.
‘We can do whatever you want,’ Elsie said, trying her best to rein Woody in. ‘It’s important that we find music we all like and have fun performing it.’
Stan raised his hand. ‘Well, you can count me in, girl. I love a bit of warbling, me.’ He nudged Irene, who was sitting beside him. ‘What d’ya reckon, Reenie? Up for showing these whippersnappers how it’s done?’
Irene smiled but said nothing, her downy cheeks turning the tiniest bit pink.
‘Don’t let her fool you,’ Stan said. ‘Irene used to be on the stage, back in the day. One of Brighton’s finest, she was. Sang with Vera Lynn on a concert tour for the troops in Canada at the end of the war when she was just seventeen.’ He patted her knee. ‘Bit of a hoofer in your day, weren’t you, girl?’
‘Stop it, Stanley,’ she replied, and Elsie noticed how bright her eyes shone as she smiled. ‘I haven’t sung for years.’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’ll be good to have another Brighton great in our ranks,’ Daisy remarked, pointedly nodding at Woody.
‘So what happens now?’ Aoife asked, the sudden arrival of her voice surprising everyone in the room.
Elsie shrugged. ‘It’s really up to you all. I suppose the first thing is to find an evening to meet that suits everybody and then we start work proper next week.’
After much discussion – and several random veerings off-course with Woody’s Hellfinger references – Wednesday evenings were deemed to be perfect for choir rehearsals, and the inaugural meeting of the choir came to an end.
Elsie thanked them as they began to leave, wondering how many would return the following week.
‘It sounds like a bit of a laugh,’ Sasha said at the door, long false eyelashes fluttering beneath her razor-sharp, bleached-blonde fringe. ‘Will we be able to do solos and stuff? Only people say I have a bit of a solo voice.’
Elsie shrugged. ‘I don’t see why not. This choir can be whatever we want it to be.’
‘Sweet. See you next Wednesday.’
Stan and Irene shook Elsie’s hand. ‘Lovely evening,’ Irene smiled. ‘Most unexpected, but lovely.’
‘I hope you’re ready for our vocal delights, girl,’ chuckled Stan.
‘I’m looking forward to experiencing them.’
Daisy joined Elsie by the door as the last of the choir members filed out into the chilly night. ‘Do you think that went well?’ she asked, clearly not all that convinced that it had.
‘I think so. I suppose we’ll find out next week.’
Walking home, Elsie took a deep breath and looked up at the starlit sky. The night might not have taken the course she was expecting, but it felt good nevertheless. Positivity seemed to sparkle around her as she walked: the lights from the homes she passed were brighter, the night sky was a beautiful midnight blue and her heart felt lighter than it had for years.
‘This choir could well be the making of you, Elsie Maynard,’ she said to herself.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hello again, hello …
It was still dark when Elsie awoke next morning, pools of light from the streetlights outside her windows pooling in through the half-closed curtains in the bedroom of her Victorian terraced house. The dream from which she had stirred was the same that had brought her to daylight many times before: not a nightmare as such, more a captured moment of time playing on a perennial loop in her subconscious. She had dreamed it so often that it was strangely comforting now, almost reassuring in its reliability. There were never any words, only sensations. Oddly enough, the locations regularly changed, but the essence of the dream remained constant: the touch of a hand on hers followed by a tiny squeeze – barely perceptible to the naked eye but as powerful as a one-hundred-thousand-volt shock. And then, nothing but the feeling of being suspended in a pitch-black void, as if hanging above the earth before the lights of morning appeared. At first, Elsie had been unnerved by the dream but now it was an accepted part of her new life: a last vestige of the past to remind her of how far she had come.
Slowly rising from sleep-tossed sheets, she padded down white wood-stained stairs to her kitchen and leant against the beechwood countertop as the kettle bubbled up into life. She rubbed her eyes and caught sight of the list of possible choir songs she had scribbled on the back of an electricity bill by the phone hours before. Instantly, she felt her heart lift as the thrill of potential struck her like it had last night walking home from the choir meeting.
There was a mixture of material – from well-loved musical numbers to a smattering of recent chart songs and a couple of choir classics she remembered singing at school. Woody had, of course, suggested a few that she had so far successfully avoided – including an intriguing medley of Blue Oyster Cult ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ and Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’, performed to a stomping glam rock-style beat. Something told Elsie that Brighton, however bohemian it liked to appear, wasn’t quite ready for that musical delight to be unleashed …
She
